


Carlos the Sexual Object

by onesickmind



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anal Sex, Autistic Carlos, BDSM, Bondage, Carlos has Asperger's Syndrome, Carlos has Violent Fantasies, Carlos is Autistic, Carlos is a Dork, Cecil Is a Good Boyfriend, Cecil has Great BDSM Manners, Cecil is Human, Cecil is Mostly Human, Cecil's Voice, Everything is consensual, First Time, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Oral Sex, Rape Fantasy, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violent Sex, Violent Thoughts, Voice Kink, all that good stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:15:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2635988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onesickmind/pseuds/onesickmind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A beautiful story of a man coming to accept himself as sexy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Carlos looks at himself in a mirror.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Carlos looks at himself in a mirror.

And suddenly, he is a sexual object.

 

Carlos knows all the negative connotations attached to the term “sexual object,” remembers all the things he's seen about women's rights, but it occurs to him to apply it to himself, and it fits. Feels right. ...Sexy, even. In that frightening, wrong, stomach-fluttering kind of way.

 

Carlos poses in the mirror before he showers. Bares his teeth at himself-- straight, “like a military cemetery.” Stretches his arms above his head and tries to flatten out the tub at his middle. Makes his eyes focus on his nipples, like a lewd ogler might. He thinks very hard about the erogenous zones on his chest, typically ignored, now perhaps a point of interest for someone aroused by him. He runs his fingers through his hair and imagines someone thinking it is cut that way just to be erotic. He sexualizes the tone of his skin.

 

He is a scientist, and for some reason, that profession is sexy, and for some reason, the fact Carlos' profession is sexy makes him feel sexier as well. He throws his lab coat on like it is a fetish, like it is women's underwear or the leather and studs of BDSM wear. Open in the front over his naked body, it draws immediate attention to his genitals.

 

He has genitals. He, Carlos, has genitals, pieces of flesh and muscle and hormone and life-propagating seed that are designed to be touched and stiffened and pushed inside another body in a fit of passion and moaning. These belong to him. These are a part of him. Carlos touches his dick; it's half-hard and twitches under his palm. When is the last time he did this? When he was a teenager? He has been so busy with science lately. Somewhere during his college education and loveless career, he has become so absorbed by science, so rejected by social groups, so greyed out by his work that he has forgotten that he has genitals and nipples and sexy hair and the ability to desire.

 

He thinks of that smoothly thick voice on the radio, its confident and enthusiastic tones describing everything about him that is sexy, and wraps his hand around himself with a tug. He catches his own eyes in the mirror, and flushes. This is ridiculous. He drops himself and gets into the shower. There he cleans himself, like always, no different from washing a piece of lab equipment or the dishes.

 

**

 

I mean, he knows he's gay, doesn't he? He... he's comfortable with his sexuality. He was sexual, once. Or, at least, he knew how to think about being sexual. About being attractive to other men.

 

Well, maybe not attractive to other men. Maybe not sexual. Maybe that was part of why Carlos buried the sexual side of himself so quickly and thoroughly: Discussing his orientation was taboo. He could not chase after the girls, not that they would have come flocking to his awkward and gawky frame, and the idea of approaching random boys to discover their orientation, with the very high probability of failure, had him quickly pushing aside thoughts relating to his genitals and nipples and sexy hair and ability to desire, distracting himself with comic books and science instead.

 

**

 

And it was easy enough. Every time he was expected to become a sexual object, to become a thing that desires and hardens and fucks, every time his peers raised their eyebrows lewdly at him and nodded with a, “go for it,” it was in regards to a girl, and he was not aroused. Carlos knew he was not asexual. He knew he had urges for men, or at least used to before they became too frustrating to think about. But there is a strange warped aspect of reality known as “what everyone around you thinks,” and as his friends walked away with girls while he hunched over his books, he became asexual.

 

**

 

It was almost like he'd trained himself, he realized as he cleaned his balls and flaccid penis and felt it perk and, with embarrassment, pulled his hand away. Every time he did see men who aroused him, on TV or in real life or in pictures, he promptly stopped his line of thought. It was useless. It would go nowhere. The cute boy who was his chem lab partner was likely straight, and it would be weird to think about getting on his knees and sucking him off. Imagine looking at a real person and having filthy thoughts running through his head! It almost felt like violating them. And, worse, what if they could tell, by his flushing and his subtle body posture and expression (which he understood normal people could read quite well), that he was thinking about them sexually? Humiliating!

 

Even fantasies about fictional characters were halted. They led too quickly to painful desires he could not in real life resolve. And anyway, he always felt like he was violating the actor, a bit. To look at Nathan Fillion and then take him into his head and unclothe him and make him writhe and scream in bonds in a mixture of pleasure and pain on Carlos' bed--

 

Oh. And there was that.

 

The fact any of the scarce fantasies that made it through the barriers in Carlos' mind involved violence.

 

He did not know where it came from. He was never sexually assaulted or beaten as a child, aside from the occasional punches and shoves from bullies. But as far back as he could remember, watching violence on TV had always aroused him, especially when the victim was bound. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with the heroes tied up by the enemy and shouting in distress, had been his sexual awakening. The first thing he touched himself to, a scene of April O'Neil wrapped in ropes while water rose and threatened to drown her. As young as five, he would sometimes wrap cords around his wrists as he hid under sheets, pretending he was trapped, too young to understand any sexual side but feeling strangely good as he twisted his wrists in the bonds. He would always wish he could fall asleep like that, but shame would set in after only a couple minutes and he would push the weird things off.

 

But violence was certainly not acceptable. So, along with boys, any attraction to violence was quickly shunned and turned off.

 

So, without even noticing, Carlos became asexual.

 

**

 

But this man wanted him.

 

The thought seemed to wake him one night. He was hard. His body, his asexual book-reading girl-ignoring body was hard, his body always so careful and precise and scientific beneath its clean white lab coat was hard, and he thought, this man wanted him.

  
No possibility of rejection. This man belonged to the tiny subset of men who were gay. He could do this. He could create a relationship with this man in which it was okay to take him naked into his mind, in which it was okay for him to take him naked into his real bedroom, into his real arms, into his real mouth and his real anus-- that last thought, the deliberate thought of the place waste exited but sexual pleasure could enter, made him shudder-- into him and around him, fuck, he could make himself hard, make his genitals act like sexual things, and push inside a willing body, a body that wanted him, a body that thought he was SEXY--

 

Carlos had grabbed himself again, but the feeling he began to chase with a few strokes shunted off and he took his hand away and went flaccid again.

 

Cecil would never be on board for his violent fantasies. Already, his image of himself plowing into Cecil-- so precious and rare!-- had quickly appended a ball gag over his mouth and injuries on his sides. _  
_

 

And he was back to fantasies a person would feel uncomfortable for him to be having about them.

 

And he was back to having to turn his fantasies off.

 

**

 

But Cecil wanted him _so much_.

 

They had interacted a few times. Cecil had experienced his awkwardness, and certainly Cecil could see his body well enough to gauge its attractiveness and weight. Cecil knew him, more and more, and more and more he was becoming a sexual object to him.

 

**

 

Carlos stood before the mirror again. He looked at himself, and told himself firmly, this is a sexual object.

 

This is a body meant for arousing men, for giving them physical sexual satisfaction. This is skin and hair and nipples and brain that are fetishized. Every part of him makes men hard.

 

He leaned his shoulders against the cool wall. He reached his hand down deliberately. The exercise today was to make himself hard, lewdly, humiliatingly hard, and then see what a sexy fuck he was in that state.

 

He squirmed as he touched and looked at himself, trying to find an angle at which he did not feel silly. That mess of junk in the middle of his otherwise smooth body certainly looked silly enough on its own. But no. No, no, no. There is a man now who does not think this looks silly. There is a man who thinks this looks sexy. There is a man who can look at Carlos with his body bare and his genitals erect, and use this as a stimulus to ejaculate.

 

\--while he is bound and crying out as the pain--

 

No, Carlos schooled the violent thoughts back. Just sex. No violence. Lock that back in the box he pulled his sexuality out from.

 

Carlos touched himself, lightly, teasingly. Tried to coax his cock up, yes, that was a sexual word, cock, not a neutral one like penis. Coax it up while thinking of Cecil, while thinking of Cecil thinking of him, while thinking of Cecil making himself hard while an image of Carlos stood naked in his brain.

 

He had to shove back more images of violence, strip another gag that had appeared over Cecil's talented mouth, strip rough ropes that had appeared on his own wrists, focus just on the nudity and the genitals and oh, don't forget those little commonly-ignored erogenous zones dotting his chest like lewd buttons.

 

But this was tiring. Half-hard, he slumped, exhausted from the exercise. The feeling of shame and denial, conditioned into him like a psychological experiment, made him sigh and put his clothes back on. He felt silly getting dressed in his bathroom after disrobing for no real reason. If he had a dog, he would be embarrassed for it to cock its head upon observing the confusing ritual of Carlos removing his clothes and then putting the same clothes right back on.

 

**

 

He was getting good at suppressing the violent thoughts.

 

And with that, his sexual confidence strengthened. He began to find he had no reason to avoid anything with Cecil. He finally, finally began to truly believe that these two men, this radio host and this scientist, could become sexual objects and see each other as such and then in the real world treat each other as such.

 

They could date. They could touch. They could... they could fuck.

 

Carlos could have a boyfriend.

 

**

 

And then he sat on that thought for a while. All logical barriers behind him, he found old trained habits creeping up on him like ghosts. Because even though he KNEW he could have Cecil, he could walk right into that booth and kiss him on the mouth and have him hard against his body, he still said to himself, no, that won't happen. Carlos is always sitting alone with his books when such opportunities arise. Carlos is asexual.

 

**

 

It starts to drive him mad, a little bit, and thank goodness he clings on to his bit of “therapy” through thick and thin. Listening, with sweating palms and rapidly beating heart, to Cecil's broadcasts, every single night, worrying like a school girl if he has finally lost interest every time he fails to mention him, and feeling all of his insides leap and shout whenever that thick liquid voice praises him.

 

\--that thick liquid voice screaming--

 

Shh, stop that. He could have this. He could have this. He could have this.

 

Cecil could have HIM.

 

Carlos is a sexual object someone would want to possess.

 

**

 

Was that weird?

 

Was it weird to want to be a sexual object?

 

It strikes him as wrong in a human rights sort of way. His thoughts slip uncomfortably back to feminism and anti-slavery and the inalienable dignity of every human being. The utter abomination of one human owning another, of one person objectifying another.

 

But it also felt fiendishly right, and for some reason, Carlos found this a much easier fetish to accept than his fetish for violence.

 

Then he found himself, in the process of pushing the violence down and clinging to the sexual object theme, imagining himself as a life-sized doll, a sex toy with holes deliberately molded into it, lying helpless and stiff as Cecil grunted over it, and he started to get hard and then found himself flushing with shame.

 

**

 

The bowling alley.

 

Carlos listened to Cecil's broadcast on the way over there, and heard it on the speakers inside. He wanted to give him a trophy. A _trophy_. It was ridiculous but so, so very flattering, and Carlos could tell he was sincere. Every word from Cecil's mouth undulated with adoration. Cecil wanted him there, now, and Carlos could just see them kissing and fucking over that trophy--

 

And of course, by habit, he quickly shut down that line of thinking and focused on science.

 

There was a miniature city under Lane 5. His task right now was to show them that. His identity right now, the intelligent, academic, asexual scientist.

 

He walked into the bowling alley, flashing his credentials-- the ID saying proudly that he is a Scientist-- and shook hands with Teddy Williams, pushing down inappropriate thoughts that tried to rise with the sound of Cecil's continued broadcast inside. Don't touch people when thinking that way. He successfully gave Teddy's hand four chaste pumps and made eye contact with nothing filthy going on behind them.

 

He attracted everyone's attention, feeling briefly guilty for interrupting a man's birthday party. That man was supposed to be the focus of attention right now, on this one day of the year he had a right to demand it. But Carlos was not just drawing attention to himself. He was drawing attention to Science. His social acceptability would once again be humbly sacrificed to advance human knowledge.

 

Carefully, he lowered himself into the pit. Careful not so much to avoid falling, but to avoid wrecking the little city. He placed his feet gingerly, squinting hard at his toes to ensure he stepped on no tiny people or structures, then looked up to shout his findings to the audience above.

 

And then, pleasure.

 

No. Not pleasure. Agony.

 

Carlos' chest exploded in an unbearable intensity that was not orgasm, but pure, inescapable pain. He clutched at the blood and tried to gasp. His breath wheezed like he was trying to gasp through a straw. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. This should not be making him hard, but fuck, as he fell (careful in the back of his mind to fall against the little cliff and not the fragile city), fuck, as he hit that solid wall and began to writhe, the pain and blood loss and oxygen deprivation and inability to move from his position of clutching his chest and gritting his teeth made him so damn hard, and you know what, at the moment he really wasn't going to worry about that. He was dying. Fuck, and he tried to gasp air, and his mortal wound throbbed, and he had never felt so sexually alive.

 

His vision quickly tunnelled. He savored the moment his body went limp. A dead thing. An object.

 

**

 

He coughed and convulsed. Pained dark eyes looked at him, then, greying, turned away.

 

People surrounded him, worried over him, asked him if he was okay. People surrounded the Native American next to him, too, but then stepped away when it became clear he was dead.

 

Carlos was helped to his feet, brought to a mounted plastic chair by the ball return and fanned, told that he was mortally wounded and then saved. Cecil's voice came overhead, overjoyed that he was alive.

 

One man sat there, looking despondent. The man whose birthday Carlos had interrupted. He hunched his shoulders in guilt--

 

No.

 

Carlos had almost died. Right here, right now, his life could have been wrecked.

 

Life can wreck you. People can wreck you. Always, everywhere, at every moment, life and people and chance and every conceivable thing in the universe were wrecking each other, and why the hell could he not participate. Why should he alone hang back, terrified of ending something or making a mistake.

 

He had been timid for too long. He pushed through the crowd, unapologetic for his rudeness, even in this rare moment that his offense was deliberate and not accidental. He shoved the nice girl who had fanned his face, blew off the man who helped him to the chair, eyes focused on his cell phone.

 

Everything in the universe wrecked each other.

 

As he lifted the phone to his ear, he was no longer afraid to wreck Cecil.

 

**

 

His towering feeling of confidence and fearlessness had softened somewhat by the time Cecil got there. His resolve was much weaker, the timidity had begun to return, and he almost, almost turned away.

 

But he did not. He would never, ever allow himself to turn away again. Some day, life would wreck him permanently. He'd be damned, he vowed to himself, if he died having never taken the opportunity to do the same.

 

Don't be afraid. Don't back down. Do what normal people do.

 

He shyly clutched his hands to his chest when he saw Cecil's car pull up. The man jumped out and rushed towards him. The man who moaned praises of him every day, the man who loved him, the man who saw him as a sexual object.

 

“What is it? What danger are we in? What mystery needs to be explored?”

 

For an instant, reality crumbled as Carlos saw himself sitting at a table reading books.

 

No. Stop that.

 

Carlos is a sexual object and he is not afraid to take what he desires.

 

With far less strength and triumph than he thought he would declare it with, Carlos mumbled, “Nothing. After all that happened, I just wanted to see you.”

 

He forced his down-cast gaze to flick up for a moment of eye contact.

 

Cecil was steamy with lust.

 

Carlos gasped a little. He had never been good at that mysterious super power known as “reading people,” but there it was, right in Cecil's eyes, as clear to Carlos as these things must be to normal people. Cecil was overjoyed that his sexual object wanted him back.

 

With that gasp came a little bit of reeling, too, and then Cecil was holding him worriedly, guiding him inside Arby's, babbling about his injury and telling him he needed to get some food into him.

 

Cecil was anxious as he ate across the table from him. Carlos, in an epiphany that made him feel like a god, realized Cecil had all the anxieties Carlos used to have. He was not certain Carlos did indeed reciprocate, and was flustered and awkward as he touched him and then jerked his hand away like it was not allowed. Carlos tried to give him a confident smile, though he had no idea what one looked like and the result was that Cecil asked if he was about to faint.

 

They finished eating, and Cecil insisted on supporting him out to the car, an offer that very suddenly stopped seeming unnecessary when Carlos stood and started to black out. The Apache Tracker had healed him, but maybe a few pints of blood were still missing. He leaned against Cecil as he led him out to the parking lot. The arms around him felt possessive and grateful, like Cecil was holding a delicate gift. He felt his breath on his hair, so close his lips must almost be touching him.

 

With a sudden thought, Carlos opened his eyes. Head hung downwards, he did not even need to shift to see the slight bulge in Cecil's pants.

 

Sexual objects.

 

Cecil helped him onto the hood of his car. Carlos' dizzy spell had subsided enough for him to sit up on his own, but he leaned against Cecil anyway. He put his head on his shoulder, and let his sexy hair brush his neck. Cecil shifted. He was trying to hide his erection.

 

Carlos put a hand on his knee. He saw. He knew. He accepted. He desired.

 

A part of him said to take Cecil, right there, to unzip his pants and expose that erection and then expose his own and then mash them against each other in a passionate frenzy.

 

But a part of him was still sane and sensible, and said, just take it slow.

 

You will get your chance to wreck him.

 

Carlos stood before his mirror after Cecil drove him home, chest wound ignored as he stared himself in the face.

 

Had he really just accepted that he wanted to bind, hurt, and rape Cecil?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Chapter 2 is already half written. The sex half. And boy is it a lot of sex. Whoo


	2. In which Carlos goes on a date.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Carlos worries a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out the sex will be NEXT chapter. Don't worry, it'll be up in just a few days. See the end notes for a short preview. ;)

  
Carlos stares at the empty sky, scared of all it implies.

He has this life. This one, single life. To him in every hour, every every day and plodding year, it feels like he has plenty of time. But his lifespan is not even a second on the universal clock. In fact, if the universe ended with his life in about 50 years, and the lifespan of the universe were scaled to that of a human being, then his life would exist for less than one one-thousandth of a second.

That empty sky, as highly composed of void as it is, holds more matter than he could touch, see, or conceive, even if he worked constantly without sleep. That empty sky is huge, and he is so tiny that no atom he touches will even escape the atmosphere of this little dust speck adrift in that enormous void. No idea he inspires will ever be seen beyond this lonely neighborhood. Even the Voyager will disappear into the void.

He will die. And nothing he does will matter.

This fear is welcome. Soothing. Like the moments he is able to stop thinking about all his other problems and just worry that if he can't figure out how to neatly peel off a shell, he can never make deviled eggs.

He stares at the empty sky, and feels terrified and small, but it is welcome relief from all his other fears.

His first date is tomorrow.

***

He thinks about it. Prepares for it. Overthinks. Overprepares. Of course he would never expect anything different from himself. Even before obtaining a boyfriend-- He has a boyfriend, Oh!-- he knew he would spend far too many hours picking out the right outfit and showering and deciding exactly what to bring.

He goes through all his lab coats, shirts, pants, and footwear, matching until he finds the perfect outfit that looks like he just tossed it on without trying too hard and naturally looks good but not overdressed. He does indeed pick out his favorite pair of underwear-- he is not expecting to get to that point tonight, but JUST IN CASE...

He washes thoroughly, enough so for the JUST IN CASE as well, though he is shy about scrubbing too close to his anus. He gets his fingers all soapy and goes for it, just on the outside. Has to be free of all smells. Totally clean. He shampoos and conditions his pubic hair. Rinses thoroughly because the last thing he needs on his date is an awkward itch.

He gets himself all ready, and, thanks to Cecil's constant texts and praise on the radio, is feeling positive-giddy more than anxious-giddy.

Yes. Positive. Cecil knocks, and Carlos forces himself to believe his heart jumps out of joy.

**

It is amazing to Carlos, how sometimes he can do nothing but think about what will happen, and then, when it happens, his brain utterly turns off.

**

They went on their first date, and it was all just a blur. Just a shadowy buzz as his mind reeled with fantasies and desires. Well, maybe the shadowy buzz was more from the buzzing shadow people. Carlos' first instinct was to investigate the phenomenon and save the town, but he told himself firmly that no, he has decided to be selfish and is not going to turn away from this romantic situation like he always does. Every time, he finds some silly thing and makes it seem like a life-and-death situation that just HAS to take him from a social encounter. He was not falling for that weakness today.

By the time they got home, nearly the entire town had been transformed, and all practicality really did demand Carlos turn his attention to it. But not without giving Cecil a kiss.

Carlos was a sexual object. And he was going to give Cecil a kiss.

He hesitated. Thought maybe he should invite Cecil inside his lab to look at all those beakers and humming electrical equipment. But no. That was stalling. This was it, they idled at his door. This was were it happened.

He began to mumble more things about getting back to work. Needed to save the town. No. He was beginning to retreat. He suddenly felt like Cinderella as his finery greyed and stacks of books returned with each progressing chime of midnight.

He leaned forward, quickly, and kissed Cecil. Then he ran inside.

And hit himself hard, HARD on the forehead. Damn!

That date was terrible. He said so many stupid things. Fumbled every line of their dinner conversation. The way he turned his back on Cecil and got distracted by the trees? The way he groped for words, and then, even worse, babbled for ten minutes straight when Cecil asked him about science? The kiss had been so awkward. He ruined it. His first kiss, and he ruined it. He should have waited, he should have waited for the perfect moment, not force it like that, just jam his head into Cecil's face like a crashing airplane, when would he FUCKING learn to read the FUCKING mood?

He had finally, finally found a man who liked him. Who thought he was "neat." And he'd just completely shown him what an utter fool he was. Carlos the sexual object? More like Carlos the walking bag of delusion. All his ideas he had about himself being desirable popped like the thin-skinned, gaudy balloon they were. He felt like an idiot. He felt like a fake. And now Cecil had uncovered all his lies. Lies like he could make it through this date. Lies like he could be desired. Lies like he could interact with another human being like he was a fucking normal human being. Lies like he was normal. Cecil wanted normal. Well, no, okay, that was too far, "normal" was not necessarily a proper goal, Carlos knew every person was a unique and beautiful snowflake, and even Aspies could be loved, even people with severe physical, mental, and emotional disorders could be loved, but him specifically? The unique constellation of problems that was Carlos? No. Fuck no. And now Cecil knew that anything positive he saw in Carlos was a sham.

Carlos tossed his head and squeezed out a pair of hot tears as he went back into his lab. Someone was in a side room and he quickly walked by, locked himself in a room nobody ever used, hit himself on the head some more times, and decided to go ahead and let himself cry. That was healthy, right? Yes, of course. Let out your emotions occasionally, don't bottle them up, it hurt so much now but intellectually he knew it would not hurt like this forever, there would be some relief after he let it all out and then in time it would fade and become numb, stabbing him only on the occasion he recalled it.

Other social blunders of his past came up, nasty, yet in a way helpful, needles to bleed out his pain. All the stupid things he said, the times he offended people, made people think he was an idiot, sounded condescending or pompous, ran his loud oblivious mouth, missed the social cue, UGH.

He queued up a fantasy, where vicious beasts with long sharp fangs tore him limb from limb. Nothing sexual about it, just let the things rip him apart, and rip him apart, and rip him apart, punish him and annihilate him until he was nothing but a horrid scream.

This hurt so much, WHY? He didn't normally wind up locked in a back room crying when he made a mistake-- the salt would have cured his cheeks by now if he had-- normally he just smacked his forehead a few times, paced about feeling upset for a couple minutes, and then forced his mind to move on. But no, no, no, he knew, it was because this time, the stakes had been so high, because THIS time---

He had really, really REALLY wanted Cecil.

Another human being. He wanted the contact. Even leaning against him on the car, the desire to be close to this man had overwhelmed his aversion to touch. He DESIRED Cecil, in a way that was deeper than the way he passionately wanted things like his degree and his research position. A real desire for human connection, see this, he had begun to GROW, he had begun to HEAL, and then that tender scab was ripped off, leaving him bleeding harder than before.

He always had to be such a screw-up. Fuck. Come on, Carlos. Calm down. Get used to it. This is how you are. Just accept it, don't reach for anything else, don't hurt yourself by trying to be something you're not, by trying to have things you know you can't handle.

You're happy with your science. Come on. It's okay, you've killed this early, it would have hurt more if you'd let it drag on. Add Cecil to the list of people you can never stand tall and proud before, add Cecil to the list of people you must always have the slightest posture of shame and apology before, let this momentum of tears run its course and then force yourself to forget it and go back to being what you're good at-- a SCIENTIST.

Grey Carlos sitting alone, surrounded by books, put his head down on his desk and cried.

The beasts in his mind continued to maul him. He had been tied down by villagers with chains so he could not even struggle. Limbs stretched and helpless and quivering in pain. The moment vulnerable flesh was exposed, more teeth sank into it, ripped it deeper. He was disassembled, chewed, erased, and then the cycle began again.

The vision was cathartic. Contemlpating it comforted him, brought him back, made him feel safe. Oddly secure, even in his anguish. Just pictured himself being ripped up, tortured, destroyed, and it was satisfying, soothing.

In time, his outburst did run his course, and he was almost suddenly calm. Still aching, but the pain was less. He cleaned himself off. Listened at the door for the sound of people, then slipped upstairs to his apartment to wash his face.

He continued to ruminate. The memories of the date paraded, huge, across his brain. Stupid Carlos, waving his head back and forth with his mouth open like a Muppet on his date. Waving his arms like he was about to smack Cecil in the face while talking. Being loud, interrupting, babbling, stumbling. Completely forgetting about eye contact, about tact. Careening and oblivious. He couldn't control himself for a single afternoon.

He was firmly sullen when his phone chirped with a text message.

From Cecil. UGH. That sharp stab got him squarely in the gut. He couldn't handle that right now. He did not expect it to actually be a condemnation of his actions-- people rarely flat-out told him what he did wrong, and it did not seem in Cecil's character to do so-- but it was probably something like "Do you remember if I left such and such at the restaurant" or, of course, "Hey, I just remembered a reason I can never see you again, sorry!"

He didn't fear the latter line. In fact, he would welcome it more, because it would entail never seeing or speaking to Cecil again, rather than the interaction that would happen if he had to answer a simple question or return some object Cecil had forgotten.

Oh.

Carlos reached in his pocket. Cecil's portable headset was in there. He had asked him to hold it for him when they climbed out the window.

Carlos flopped on the couch and moaned. He did not want to see Cecil to return them, not this soon, the shame was still too thick. He would only be able to stare furiously at the ground, head down, cheeks flushed, as Cecil accepted them with a disappointed glare.

He could… mail them maybe… or… Ah! He would drop them off at the station after Cecil had left. Hang them on the door handle in a plastic bag, let it be ambiguous whether or not he meant to run into him.

Carlos turned on Netflix and tried to distract himself, though the rumination did not stop. Come on. Things like this happen. They happen all the time. You'll carry on. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, ahhh, these beasts in my mind cannot rip me apart viloently enough, but hey, look. Didn't you promise yourself you wouldn't be afraid to wreck things?

I just didn't think I would wreck this so soon...

His mind drifted to his ideas for a time machine. Flipped through his theoretical notes on how to make one. He wished, so dearly that it hurt, that he could go back to that date, and do it over, and avoid all the mistakes he saw himself make, and say all the right things he in hindsight wish he had said, and get it perfect. Then get back in that time machine and travel back to every social encounter, live it again, and get it right.

Oh, but even in theory, it really would be physically impossible. The supercooling alone… And anyway, even if it were possible, such a use of this invention would hardly be ethical.

At around 9 pm, his phone chirped again, from Cecil again. And again, once more, at 10:30.

Carlos forced himself to sit up. He should at least tell Cecil he had his headphones. Ugh, even figuring out what he would text twisted his stomach. "I have your headphones." Yes. No. "I'll get your headphones back to you." Better. No, but then, when? In a week? In a month? He did not want to explain his plan to drop them off at the station. "I'll get your headphones back to you soon." Yes. Perfect.

He was stabbed again as he reached for the phone. The wound was still so raw. A time machine. Perhaps he could go to his lab now, and, after greivously injuring himself for all the mistakes he had made, build a machine, and go back in time, and then, maybe then, these texts would be safe to look at. If he did not read the texts now, there would not even be a paradox.

He sighed. May as well rip off the band-aid. He cringed and  unlocked his screen.

Cecil's texts were popped up, 1/3 in the front:

I had a great time. :) You are perfect. I can't wait to see you again. ;)

Something heavy instantly dispersed. Without taking time to analyze the feeling, Carlos checked the next one.

There's a new art exhibit at the mall on Thursday. Want to come with me?

That made him panic a little, and he skipped to the most recent message.

A photo of a man's face. From the context, Carlos assumed it was Cecil's, especially with his third eye so prominent. It could possibly be a different three-eyed man, but no, for all pragmatic reasons, he had to assume this was Cecil. Smiling. A selfie taken at a strange angle. His smile was different from the normal photograph smile, but Carlos could not decipher what his expression was supposed to mean.

He had a very good guess, though.

He felt so happy. Fucking roller coaster, he felt so instantly relieved, light, giddy. He grinned, and wiped a latent tear that squeezed out. Silently laughed. Cecil liked him. He had been told many times he distorted reality, thought he did worse than he actually did. The images of him being a parade float of buffoonery tried to crowd out the relief he felt, but NO. He swiped back to the first text. I had a great time. :) You are perfect. I can't wait to see you again. ;)

Carlos let out another grateful breath and hugged the phone to his chest. So warm inside. He grinned and shook his head. Cecil. Oh, Cecil. I want you so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a preview from next chapter:
> 
>  
> 
> "You like it rough?" 
> 
> If Cecil had not been so horny, it would have been a timid question, whispered with head turned away as they sat at opposite ends of the couch.


	3. In Which Carlos has SEX.

So let's cut to the chase.

A few more dates, a few more roller coasters of social anxiety and redemption, and Carlos found himself at Cecil's apartment and the Awkward Dial was turned all the way up.

Because before taking Carlos inside, Cecil had whispered in his ear, “Are you ready?”

It was an ambiguous question. Carlos guessed at its meaning. He guessed Cecil meant to ask him if he was ready for sex. He didn't ask for clarification, though. What if he were wrong? How embarrassing it would be if he said, “You mean for sex?”, when really Cecil meant, “Are you ready to have that Lord of the Rings marathon?” or somesuch. He still doubted, even after all the explicit texts, all the praises stated on dates, after all the words of adoration on the radio, that Cecil really, really, really did see him as a sexual object. That Cecil wanted him as a sexual object.

He hoped Cecil would give him signals that were more clear as the evening progressed. 

**

Carlos is a sexual object. Carlos is not afraid to wreck things. Carlos takes what he wants.

And yet, as Cecil opens his apartment door, Carlos does not shove him inside. As Cecil sits on the couch, Carlos does not dive, biting and kissing, on top of him. As Cecil beckons, he does not do anything other than sit chastely beside him and wait for him to make the move. 

After all, Carlos could be wrong.

**

“Carlos. You are the most beautiful man I have ever seen. I could build a world of your hair and nestle deep for the rest of my life. Your skin is like the dusty sky when it wraps womb-thick around me. Your teeth could divide light from its star.”

Cecil shifted very close, and kissed him deeply. For a few minutes, they made out.

Cecil's hand raked lightly down his chest. Then it settled firmly on Carlos' crotch.

Was it an accident? Was it intentional? Carlos gasped involuntarily against Cecil's lips. Cecil's hand gave a light squeeze. 

He could be wrong, his heart was pounding, but Carlos remembered everything he had decided about being unafraid to wreck things, and put his hand on Cecil's crotch as well.

Cecil was very, very hard.

“I'm ready for you,” Cecil murmured, kissing his neck and licking his ear. “My gorgeous, perfect Carlos. I love you. I want you inside.”

His fingers rubbed Carlos, deep and slow.

“I'm a virgin,” Carlos blurted out.

Sexy, Carlos. Smooth.

Cecil paused. “Is this okay?”

“Yes. Of course. I just mean. I don't really know...” I don't know how to be the sexual god my fantasies tell me I should be. I don't know how to be the exceptional lover I've surely misled you to think I am. I don't know if I'll get this right. I don't know how I can possibly get this right, given my total inability to navigate all other social situations.

“You don't know if you want to do this?”

“No! Yes! I do! I...” Carlos swallowed hard and turned his head away. “I want to... have sex with you,” he whispered. Not quite as boldly as he'd hoped. “I just... I won't be............. .......perfect.”

Cecil kissed his hair. “I'm sure you will.”

Cecil pulled him by the hand into his bedroom. The lights were off, but light from the hallway and the various lights filtering through the window made things dimly visible. Closing his eyes, Carlos could imagine it was dark.

Cecil pulled him close and kissed him, and pushed his lab coat off his shoulders. Carlos kissed back, all lips and wetness, and squeezed his eyes tight, feeling the dark, feeling Cecil remove the lab coat from his body.

Soon to be tumbling, concealed by darkness, beneath the covers--

“Wait.”

Carlos pulled just barely out of the kiss, lips still touching Cecil's as he spoke. Cecil stilled.

“Sit on the bed.”

Cecil did so. Carlos reassured him with a sultry look, or at least, his best guess at what a sultry look should be. It seemed to work well enough. 

He took a deep breath, and turned on the light.

He winced and his heart began to thud. But he turned to face Cecil, and undressed in front of him.

Very deliberately. Very slowly. He ran his hands down his sides, drawing attention to his shape. He rolled his shoulders as he shrugged his lab coat off. Held it at arms length to the side and let it drop. He deliberately reached up, and stroked his hair the way Cecil must want to stroke it. 

He would have liked to have used a few more sexy undulations as he ubuttoned his shirt, and for the belt buckle to have gone much more smoothly, and for himself to have turned his head down and to the side less times, but in the end, he was standing naked before Cecil and Cecil was rapt.

Body naked. A sexual object. Beautiful and desired.

Genitals exposed and not at all silly.

Carlos flushed and forced his anxiety back. He called on everything that he had ever used to will himself to do something, and looked Cecil in the eyes.

Cecil stood and closed the distance between them. Eyes wide with awe, he gingerly touched Carlos' shoulders. Ran his fingertips slowly down his arms. Looked up and down his body, alert and bright. Not smiling. But flushing very, very hard.

Carlos swallowed. His gaze dropped, and he forced eye contact again. He slowly undid Cecil's tie. 

Cecil ran his fingers down Carlos' body while he undressed him. It was very distracting. Carlos started to panic again-- here he had taken the lead, taking the initiative to do a strip tease and now removing Cecil's clothes. Would be be expected to run this whole thing himself?

Deep worry had just barely begun to set in when Cecil made the decision for him. Carlos had knelt as he pulled down Cecil's pants, and now found himself eye to single eye with Cecil's privates. Should he kneel here and suck him off? But then Cecil's hands stroked his hair and his voice whispered, “Lie down on the bed.”

Cecil helped him up and guided him onto his back. He removed Carlos' glasses and set them carefully on the night stand, then did the same with his own. Looked at him a moment, perhaps evaluating, perhaps admiring, perhaps judging, perhaps memorizing, perhaps thinking it was pretty awesome he didn't need his glasses to see things this close up, it was all so hard to tell, before he straddled Carlos' legs and leaned over him with his body heat close enough to feel and nuzzled his neck. He whispered in his ear, “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Carlos would congratulate himself for a very long time on not babbling at that point.

Cecil again acted as though he were admiring him, staring with wide eyes and parted lips and stroking his fingers down the contours of Carlos' body. 

“Masters of us All, you're beautiful,” Cecil whispered. He ran his fingers down his sides, then down his arms, then down his thighs and legs, mapping every curve of Carlos' frame. “Galatea was not carved with this perfection.”

Carlos shuddered and groaned. Cecil kissed his ear, and then his murmuring lips began to follow wetly along the paths his fingers had mapped. 

“You smell like the wreckage left behind after the sun has set. You feel like blood wrapped in leather. But soft. So smooth.”

Cecil's fingers and whispers progressed to his crotch.

“You're huge,” Cecil said. “An oak among grass.” He stroked Carlos' cock. Cock, yes, keep using those words, not scientific words like “penis.” Carlos is a sexual object and he has a cock. 

“Your cock is flawless. Perfectly cut. Your fortune teller knew how to handle a blade. So straight. So...” Cecil wrapped his hand lightly around Carlos' penis and tugged, but Carlos was not at all hard.

Cecil slid his hand off his crotch and leaned back.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Yes! Cecil, Cecil, you're doing nothing wrong. I'm just... I'm new to this, remember? I'm a virgin. And maybe I don't, uh, know... How to...”

“Shh. It's okay. Do you... touch yourself?” He moved his hand completely away from Carlos' soft crotch and stroked his hip reassuringly.

“I used to. When I was a teenager.”

“And you brought yourself off?”  
 “Uh. N... no.” Carlos had always backed off from that frightening and overly intense charge towards orgasm. Shame had offered him little fortitude.

Carlos the asexual. He averted his gaze as the scientist sitting alone with his books hunkered down and turned another grey page.

Cecil had turned his head away, too. The hand on Carlos' hip flexed. “I don't know if this is wrong,” Cecil said softly, “but that is really, really sexy.”

“What?”

“I'll... be your first,” Cecil said, having much better practice at being bold. He licked his lips and looked at Carlos' face hungrily. “Not just as a partner. You haven't even orgasmed before. I'll be the one to do that. I--” He flushed. “I mean, if it's all right.”

“Of course it's all right.” Carlos went out on a limb and bucked his hips against his. “Cecil...”

“Ahh.” Cecil took him into a deep kiss, and their bodies pressed close together. Carlos rubbed Cecil firmly. Cecil said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes. I do.”

Cecil lowered himself over Carlos again, and nuzzled his ear. “What turns you on?”

Violence. Bondage. Asphyxiation. My own death. Carlos flushed hard and whispered, “I'm not sure.”

“Well, my most perfect Carlos,” Cecil said, smile tangible against his ear, “It will be my council-approved pleasure to discover what does.”

Carlos couldn't resist closing his eyes, imagining Cecil was a captor intent on forcing him to come. His cock twitched.

Cecil lowered himself completely onto him, weight crushing him. Trapping him. His breath was hot and billowing on his neck. Carlos clung tight to that fantasy, that this was a captor, this was an attacker, this was a rapist who would humiliate him by making his body do things that were out of his control.

Cecil moved back and forth on top of him, and he felt himself harden a little.

“There you are,” Cecil's breath smiled.

Carlos' wrists ached to be tied. He flung them around Cecil's back instead. Laced his fingers together. He was handcuffed, trapped. He buried his face in Cecil's neck and let out a little whimper.

“My perfect, beautiful Carlos,” Cecil hummed into his neck. He humped him harder. Reached down to knead his ass. Yes, of course, ass, that is what a sexual object has. Carlos is lying beneath his captor, nothing but a sexual object, and he is getting hard.

Carlos suddenly grabbed Cecil's hair, and pulled him into a kiss. Cecil responded passionately. His hand rubbed his ass unabashedly. Carlos bucked against him, feeling the shortness of movement he had, the heavy body pinning him. He would be crushed. He would be raped. He would be given feelings too intense to handle and then, as he orgasmed, he would be torn apart.

 

Carlos cried and discovered he was bucking back in rhythm with Cecil. Half-hard, balls hot, heart pounding. Pounding. Pounding. Pounding to escape, captor pounding him with fists, pounding him with... ahh... with rape...

The intensity rose, but then plateaued, and Carlos knew what he was missing, knew what needed, knew what had to be felt, and he was too horny to be ashamed, too horny to worry that this relationship will be wrecked, too horny to do anything but get what he NEEDED, and he gasped, “Pin my wrists down!”

And he did not have time to second-guess his demand. Cecil did not reject him, he did not freak out at the suggestion of violence and bondage and submission and non-consent, he did not pause to ask anxiously if Carlos was sure it was okay.

He immediately grabbed Carlos' wrists and pushed his weight down on them.

Carlos cried out and bucked. He was almost instantly rock-hard and desperate. He balled his fists and fought back, and Cecil held him firm. He cried out again, the first in what turned out to be a series of uncontrollable moans. Cecil growled deep in his throat.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me...” Carlos pushed out between his lips.

“You like it rough?” If Cecil had not been so horny, it would have been a timid question, whispered with head turned away as they sat at opposite ends of the couch. But the magic of arousal made it confident and thick with sex.

“Yes! Fuck!”

Cecil released his wrists and grabbed him around the torso, lifting and turning him firmly. He threw him back down on the bed.

“Tie me!” Carlos cried when he found himself on his stomach with an aching emptiness around his wrists.

Cecil left him to fetch something to tie him with. In that moment, Carlos started to come back to himself with wide eyes, realizing he was naked on a man's bed and begging for bondage. He started to panic.

And then Cecil was on top of him, sitting on him, yanking his arms in front of him and binding them together with his necktie. Carlos' self-awareness vanished. He let out a loud moan.

Maybe Cecil would have asked again if everything was all right, if he really did have permission, if Carlos were not babbling “fuck me fuck me fuck Cecil rape me I want you to rape me go inside me fuck” as a steady accompaniment to every breath. Their first time should be gentle and romantic, Carlos would have thought, if anything left of his brain were thinking.

A strong hand pushed down his shoulder blades and then a finger poked his anus and he twisted his wrists hard in his bonds and shouted, “YES!”

Shaking hands scrabbled for lube. Yes, he could feel Cecil trembling a little against him. He returned to his constant muttered litany and twisted his wrists until it hurt.

Cecil's slick finger pushed inside.

“Fuck, rape me, rape me, fuck.”

Carlos had thought many times, as a teenager, about sticking things inside himself, but then never quite got around to doing it. The feeling was... different than he'd imagined. Much like being on the toilet, but far more arousing. Psychologically, he knew what this feeling meant right now, and that transformed it. Cecil's finger was pushing in and out of him and his other hand was pinning Carlos' shoulders down and Cecil's mouth and breath were in his hair like an animal's and he was being **fucked**. Bracing against his bound arms, Carlos pushed his hips back into Cecil's penetrating hand. Cecil responded by fingering him harder, thrusting in all the way up to his knuckle.

“Fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me...”

Cecil's finger and back-pressing hand were removed and Carlos whimpered and twisted his wrists. There was the sound of the bottle of lube and then Cecil was pushing two fingers inside him, briefly careful as they entered and then squirming them around viciously inside. Carlos let out a hollow moan. His genitals, his hard, sexual object genitals pressed the mattress, and after bucking back into the fingers he tried to buck forward to establish a confused rhythm, not quite able to get a purchase on what his erection was asking for. The unsatisfied squirming only added to his feelings of helplessness and arousal.

“Fuck me fuck me fuck me...” Carlos continued to whimper. The sexual object continued to whimper. Fuck!

He was scissored, stretched, lubricated and opened. It burned. A brief interlude while Cecil put a condom on, and then Cecil's hands were on his hips and his tip was pressing his entrance.

He started to push in, but it wasn't enough. Carlos struggled against his bonds as hard as he could, but it wasn't enough, not violent enough.

“RAPE ME!” he shouted.

Cecil's length hesitated. His hands moved from Carlos' hips to his arm and the base of his neck and he pushed him down. Carlos cried, “RAPE ME!” again, like this wasn't enough.

This wasn't enough.

Was it possible to be enough?

Carlos' fantasies had him hanging bound and squirming from the ceiling while his stomach was slit open and guts spilled out. They had men circling him, beating him, cutting him, ripping out his eyes and fucking the holes. They had him bound to a rock on the sea, muscles aching from hours of being stretched, mindless beasts fucking him as the tide began to wash over his mouth. They had vibrating sex toys jammed and taped inside him while he was boiled alive.

Cecil pinned him down, and hell, it had to be enough. “Just thrust into me!” Carlos growled. His rapist complied.

Fuuuck, being filled. Carlos cried out, words vanishing as his breath was jerked out in time to his body being thrusted. Cecil pounded him hard, successfully convinced of how rough Carlos needed him to be, hand on his forearm creating bruises.

His own genitals squirmed against the bed, uncertain which direction to rush in to chase this building feeling.

“Choke me!” Carlos groaned as Cecil was slamming into him with nearly mindless abandon. The hand on his arm lifted, and Carlos wished Cecil had more hands, enough to pin him and choke him and bring him off all at once without letting up on a single delicious point of pressure. But this request was perhaps too difficult to accommodate at the moment: Cecil's hand brushed his throat, grabbed at it briefly, found poor purchase, then returned to its spot on his arm. A few more huffs, and then Cecil was vocalizing, a sort of bellowing shout, as he came.

“Ahh!” Carlos cried simultaneously, feeling the warmth spread inside him. He'd been raped. He'd been fucked. He'd been fucked. Carlos the sexual object had just lost his-- ahh.

Cecil was sliding out of him, but Carlos found his hips were still jerking on their own. His own release. Kneeling, Cecil pulled him roughly against his chest and began to pump him. Carlos turned his head into him and cried out. His genitals trembled and tried to follow the sensation, too much, too intense, building too quickly, he started to back off. No, not too much. Not enough. Not enough violence. Not enough restraint.

“Choke me,” he said again.

This time, Cecil complied. His hand tightened around his throat. Breath gone, clock ticking, light and dark flashing in front of his eyes, Carlos found it harder to back off from that building intensity. This was how he was going to breathe. He had to reach this orgasm so he could breathe. His body wanted so desperately to breathe.

Cecil's hand pumped, and his hips bucked, and then his throat was released and he gasped in a few breaths. Then Cecil choked him again. Tears came to his eyes. His hips started to squirm, faltering in their pursuit of orgasm. He couldn't do it, didn't know how, didn't know. Too intense, too intimidating. And not enough. Cecil released his throat and asked, “Okay?” Voice sexy and rough but genuinely concerned. “Harder,” Carlos groaned.

He was choked again. He tried to chase that feeling of orgasm and feeling of death, but no, it was not too much. It was not enough. He needed to be hanging from gallows, vicious crowd pulling down on his legs and slapping his crotch and forcing rough objects into his ass. He needed to be sinking to the ocean floor, bound tightly to weights, vibrators strapped to him to humiliate him in his last moments. He needed to be asphyxiating in space, malfunctioning suit bringing him off, haywire mechanics burrowing deep inside him, knowing this was it, he would orgasm and then never breathe again. His hips stuttered and faltered again. He couldn't reach this.

Cecil let up on his throat again and he gasped, “Stop, that's enough, stop.” Cecil stroked his throat gently and moved his hand away from it, but did not cease pumping. Carlos pushed his bound hands against Cecil's fist. “It's okay. That's enough. I... my first time,” he mumbled, shame returning and mind scrambling for socially acceptable excuses as Cecil let him go. “I just... I'm new to this. Need to get used to it. Fuck, you were hot. Thank you. Fuck.”

Cecil seemed to accept his sighed apologies. He pulled Carlos' head around, brushed his lips against his, and Carlos responded with a deep kiss. His arousal faded. His hands began to tingle and complain.

Cecil pushed him off, letting him settle on his knees in front of him. He untied Carlos' wrists. The skin was dented in, red and bruised. Carlos blinked at the evidence of how violently he had fought. Cecil took one wrist in his palm and began to stroke it gently. As he gazed at the wrist with his head down and eyelids low, Cecil looked pensive, almost solemn.

Carlos flushed. “Uh. I...”

“Hmm?” Cecil looked up.

Carlos touched his face with his free hand, rubbing his temple where the bow of his glasses normally crossed. He didn't know how to complete that utterance.

“Was it all right?” Cecil asked softly, dropping his gaze back to the wrist he was stroking. His shoulders hunched anxiously.

“Yes,” Carlos said quickly. “Yes... yes... I.” He huffed. “That was weird. I mean. I asked you to do weird things.”

Cecil kissed Carlos' wrist and began to rub it a little more firmly. He seemed to be trying to flatten out the ridges along the dent.

“It was fine.”

“Do you, uh,” Carlos said. “Do you really like...”

Cecil gripped Carlos' shoulders and commanded his gaze. “Carlos. You were perfect. Everything we just did was mind-blowing. You are my perfect, incredible, sexy scientist. I feel so lucky right now.”

I'm sexy, Carlos thought. A sexy scientist. Suddenly, the man sitting alone with his books had hard, leaking genitals inside his pants. He must have gotten a stunned look. Cecil chuckled at him and then returned to rubbing his wrist.

A few minutes passed and Cecil's smile faded. As he tried really hard to press Carlos' skin back into shape with his thumb, he said tightly, “I mean, it was okay, right?”

“Huh?”

“I mean. What I did. That was all right.”

“Yes. Yes. It was. I... I asked for it.”

“You're sure. I didn't, uh. Go too far. Do too much.”

“It was good. Hey.” Now Carlos had to reassure him. “That... was something I never thought I could ask someone for. When you...” he flushed, but remembered the bowling alley and kept speaking. “When you pinned my wrists down, everything I feared would go wrong turned out totally, perfectly right.”

Despite his determination, his next words came out only as a whisper, head hung, eyes on sheets. “Your response was perfect.”

Cecil's hand wrapped warmly and gently around the wrist he had been tending as he pulled Carlos into a kiss.

**

They showered. Carlos would have been a ball of anxiety and shame if it were not for Cecil's nearly constant stream of words praising him, for being so perfect, for the utterly perfect time they had in bed. Cecil took the lead in soaping him up, shampooing his hair, and rinsing him clean, and Carlos followed in kind. Soon they were kissing under the steaming water, and, soon after that, toweling each other off.

“Stay the night.”

Carlos nodded. Cecil left him in his towel for a moment, then returned with lightweight sweat pants and a Night Vale Children's Science Museum t-shirt. Cecil paused, flushed, and looked down. “I, ah. I uh. Planned ahead. I um. Got these for you.”

Carlos laughed. Not an intentional laugh because he knew it was necessary for communications purposes, but a real, genuine laugh. “You're like me,” he said. His mind raced for the statement that would reassure his nervous boyfriend, and finally settled on the one he would want to hear: “You're so smart to think ahead. You're great at planning things out in great detail in advance.”

He shook out the t-shirt. It was emblazoned with the forbidding logo of the current exhibit and the slogan, “There is a Skeleton Inside You!”

“It looks like my size, too!”

Cecil flushed and grinned. “Get dressed. I'll make us a snack.”

They had a very shady substitute for donuts in bed with some tea, and then snuggled down with each other. Carlos had trouble being so close to a person when he was not actively horny, but Cecil himself soon rolled over and began to snore with his back to him.

Carlos gazed at the silvery back of his lover's head, and soon closed his eyes as well.

**

So, was he a virgin still, or not?

Carlos' eyes snapped open as he pursued the thought.

He had been entered. But he had not orgasmed. He still had never, even once in his life, orgasmed. But, he had certainly been penetrated and filled.

He hated this ambiguity.

Like, what if he wanted to count the days or years from the date he had lost his virginity? Would it be this date? Or the one he successfully orgasmed? If the latter, did the former then have lesser significance? Its significance was something he was not willing to dismiss. Would it be two dates? Would he, for the rest of his life, have to count two dates as the date he lost his virginity?

He really, really hated this ambiguity. Why couldn't their first time have been clear and clean? He wished he'd gotten it right.

**

Carlos could not. Fucking. Sleep.

The snoring was irregular and that kept startling him. Cecil was not touching him, but still he was too close. Whenever he shifted, it was like the whole bed shook Carlos awake.

But it would definitely, definitely, definitely be rude to leave. Carlos sighed and tried to rest in the dark.

** 

It was a rough night, but Carlos forced himself to be cheery in the morning. He pretended he had slept. Cecil sashayed in the kitchen and made something that was totally edible. More sincere praises kept Carlos from worrying that last night had all been a huge shameful mess that Cecil hated him for.

Carlos had to go to work sooner than Cecil, and they parted with soft kisses and more sexy praise from Cecil. 

Before work, Carlos went to his apartment. Between changes  
of clothes, he stood before his mirror, naked. He did not allow himself to turn his head away or fidget self-consciously with his hair.

He stood tall and proud and stared at himself straight on.

Carlos is a sexual object.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, months after posting this chapter, I found this little snippet that was supposed to go in the "pre-sex dating section" that I wound up just breezing past.
> 
>  
> 
> Cecil lightly brushed the back of his hand, and he yanked it away without even having a chance to control himself.
> 
> "I'm sor-" Cecil started, but Carlos quickly hushed him. "It's fine, I have touch aversion, don't worry about it."
> 
> Carlos cursed himself. Don't tell your boyfriend that. He'll think he can't touch you. He'll think you can't have sex.
> 
> "I mean--" Carlos grabbed Cecil's hand firmly. His skin crawled, but a lifetime of his family and peers insisting on touching him trained him to stay still and relax. He wanted things to work out. "It's fine. It just startles me, is all."
> 
> Cecil flushed. "Neat," he mumbled.
> 
> Cecil clutched his hand, and raised his free hand to trail lightly across Carlos' cheek. Carlos placed his free hand on top of that one, pressing it firmly against his face. Light touches were the worst. Solid touches, really not too bad at all.


	4. In which Carlos has EVEN MORE SEX!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's going to be a plot to this, I swear.

Carlos barely had time to second-guess himself before Cecil invited him over again.

"I can't stop thinking about last night," Cecil said as soon as Carlos got inside. He kissed him and twined his fingers in his hair. "You were perfect."

Carlos turned his head away and flushed. "Stop. I didn't even come."

"You were PERFECT," Cecil insisted. "Who says you need to come? Just seeing your body was enough to send me over the lights in the Void… Carlos, don't you know how sexy you are?"

Of course Carlos was sexy. Carlos was a sexual object. But how immodest would it be to actually say it? To actually believe it? "I'm okay," he mumbled.

"You are GORGEOUS," Cecil said. "If spiders judged beauty by human standards, they would swarm you and your life would be a perpetual hell."

Carlos listened to the radio enough to recognize a Cecil-compliment when he heard it. He sighed. "I think… I think you're hot, too."

"Really??" Cecil squealed.

"Of course." How did Cecil not know how attractive he was? His face, his hair, his frame, the way he dressed… those cute little sweater vests that are guaranteed to drive men wild… no, there was no way Cecil did not look at himself in the mirror and go, "I am sexy."

Oh, well, actually, Cecil didn't look at himself in mirrors. So that would explain why… oh, but Carlos' mind was wandering. He came back to find Cecil going, "Omigodomigodomigod" and doing a little dance. He threw his arms around Carlos. "You make me so happy," he said, and kissed him deeply.

They did a combination of making out and stumbling to the couch, where Cecil pushed him down. He got on top of him and started kissing his neck. It felt incredible. Carlos rolled his head back and let out one of those moans that people are supposed to make when they are turned on and want their partner to keep going.

Cecil purred and nipped his neck. At Carlos' whimper, he nipped and sucked just enough to be a little painful, and Carlos realized he was getting his first hickey. Shouldn't that have happened in high school? But here he was, a full grown adult, needing to find a scarf to wear to work.

He gasped at a final hard bite placed on his neck, and Cecil chuckled at him.

“Here,” Cecil breathed. He unzipped Carlos' pants and knelt between his legs.

The next few minutes were blackness and wet, warm, billowing sensations as Carlos closed his eyes and felt Cecil's mouth and breath travel all over his balls and cock. Cecil hummed around him and gulped him and laved his tongue all over his floppy sexual bits.

His cock perked up a little, but it was nowhere near enough. When Cecil gave his near-flaccid dick a few inquisitive laps and looked up at Carlos with a confused keen, Carlos gulped and said,

“I think I have to be tied up for this.”

He was flushing furiously as he said it, braced for a painful response, because he could not imagine what the right response would be.

But by some miracle, surely thanks to Cecil's years of practiced eloquence on the radio, he nailed it. He said, “Okay.” 

Carlos tucked himself awkwardly back into his pants while they scrounged up cords and rope. He knew he would be asked and didn't have the words to answer, so as Cecil stood before him with the ropes in his hands and hesitated, Carlos said, “Like this.”

He crouched next to a wooden kitchen chair. He laid on it with his back across the seat, and threaded one arm through the mostly-empty space beneath the seat's back and pulled it alongside the legs, other arm crossing it, hands almost grasping his elbows. His chest and stomach were deliciously stretched. He put his legs on either side of the chair's legs, and placed his knees and shins at points where they could be bound in place.

Again, as he lay clothed and ridiculous in this insane position on the kitchen chair, he awaited the wrong response with tightening in his chest, unable to imagine the right response.

And again, Cecil gave the right response. He said, “Okay.”

He helped Carlos climb off the chair and they knelt on the tile, kissing, for a few minutes while Cecil sexily relieved him of his clothes. Carlos did the same, unbuttoning Cecil's shirt and wrapping his tie longingly around his wrist before letting it drop away.

Naked and still kneeling, they pressed close against each other, warm skin in a cool room. Cecil was already hard, Carlos not very much so at all, but a hand slipped between them and brushed up and down over the area, and that brought him a little more to attention.

Cecil broke away, cheeks heated, and ran his hand up and down over his crotch a few more times, kneading a little, waking him up. Then he picked up the ropes. Carlos was suddenly about 70% harder.

Cecil noticed this. He blew out a long breath of air. He pressed a palmful of rope against Carlos chest, let the tip dangle against Carlos' cock, and it twitched and grew some more. Carlos' breath began to come quickly and shallowly. His eyes lidded and greyed.

Cecil helped him onto the chair, placing his hand fully on his crotch to lift him, and then tied his arms together and to the wooden legs.

“Uh,” Cecil said, pausing. “Do you think we should put a towel or a blanket down to cushion the edges of--”

“No, keep going,” Carlos panted.

“Okay.”

Cecil made sure the bonds were tight and firm with a few sharp tugs, then moved to secure his legs. It was an awkward position and took a lot of rope, but in short order, Carlos could not move his legs an inch. He could wiggle them, maybe, a few millimeters at most.

“Are you all right?” Cecil asked softly, standing over him.

“Ahh! Yes. Touch me,” Carlos gasped. With his chest stretched so tight and his head hanging back, he could not take a full breath.

His genitals were exposed untouched in the air; Cecil now passed his palm over them again. Brushing them, disappearing, alternating between soft broad strokes of warm flesh and the emptiness of the cool air. Carlos moaned. He needed more contact, but each time the hand lifted away, could not move in the slightest to follow it.

He was breathing rapidly, breath hissing between clenched teeth, body straining against every inch of the rope, face red and turning side to side, neck stretching and arching in his body's inability to move, when Cecil finally put his mouth on him. Wet, warm, he engulfed his erection. Sucked and swirled. Then went away.

“Ahh!” Carlos cried at the feeling of cool air again. He tried to buck and failed, and just writhed again against his bonds. “Don't tease me!”

Cecil's mouth was on him again, without a break this time. He lapped and laved and did all sorts of things that no part of Carlos' depraved mind had imagined before. Carlos was hard and gibbering as his tip ran along the roof of Cecil's mouth, his tonsils, his throat. He wanted his belly slit open, he wanted a knife to cut right from his solar plexus down to the top of his groin so the taut skin could split apart and his guts could burst out, blood and gore joining the wetness of Cecil's mouth.

“Ahh!” he cried again. Now that he craved the violence, Cecil's mouth was not enough. It was like Cecil had left him untouched in the air again. He had to have it. He had to be slit open.

That was impossible. He tried to come up with an alternative.

“Gag me,” he said.

Because he could not have what he wanted, maybe it would do it for him to feel like it was just because he was unable to ask. Unable to control anything. Totally at Cecil's mercy. Forced to come, on Cecil's terms, his own desires callously ignored. Brought off with all the power and self-determination of a sex toy.

Cloth was packed into his mouth and then bound in place. Fuck, Carlos thought as knots tightened behind his head. Cecil returned to licking his crotch and he whimpered and moaned with abandon.

Needed to be slit open. Couldn't ask for it. Gagged, tied, helpless, in Cecil's complete control. Forced to orgasm. Denied the ability to tell him how to make him orgasm. Had to happen. Would be forced to happen, forced to happen, forced to happen.

The thoughts actually got him close, but as that million-ton train of orgasm picked up speed and focused its lights on him head on, he again backed off. He couldn't do it. The sensations became too intense, irritating. But he was gagged and could not tell Cecil to stop.

His body must have jerked in a different way, or the quality of his grunts must have changed, because after less than a minute of Carlos genuinely wishing this were over, Cecil paused with his lips against his deflating genitals and placed his hand on the back of his head. “Do you want to keep going?” he asked. Carlos shook his head. Cecil immediately left his crotch, cut off his gag, and began undoing the rest of the ropes.

“I'm sorry,” Carlos said.

“For what?” Pausing in his attempts to un-knot Carlos' arms, Cecil's head came around to look at him with pure innocent confusion on his face. He genuinely had no idea what Carlos was apologizing for.

And then, Carlos couldn't figure out what he was apologizing for, either.

“Nothing,” Carlos said. He let his head drop back while Cecil returned to setting him free.

***

Carlos wonders what is going on in Cecil's head. But he is far too embarrassed to ask.

Like, does Cecil have violent fantasies like his? Is Cecil only truly satisfied when he can be predatory and rough? Or is Cecil merely pandering to Carlos' whims? What if Cecil is secretly wishing he could just take Carlos sweetly and gently, and forgo all the complicated ropes and games?

Certainly Cecil isn't new to the concept. The moment Carlos asked him to pin him down, he did so, and he showed no hesitation over the ropes and gags. A past lover wanted it, perhaps? Or has Cecil researched this thoroughly, fantasized about it constantly, and urged his partners to take place in scenes just like the kind Carlos likes?

Does it matter?

Does it really matter if Cecil is really into it, or just willing to go along with it?

What if Cecil actually doesn't like it? What if Cecil is attracted by Carlos' hair and brains and such, and will do this to keep him, even though really he wishes he doesn't have to do this at all? What if he spends time away from Carlos grimacing at the memories of sex and dreading having to play rape games next time they're together? What if, what if, what if Cecil has a bit of a mental disorder, or some fragility to his personality, or some past trauma, and having to act out violent sex is harming him?

These thoughts keep Carlos awake at night. He hugs his pillow and stares into the blurry dark with wide eyes. But he cannot imagine confronting Cecil about it.

***

And he wakes up again and has that weird guilty pride for his last bout of worrying being for Cecil's well-being first, before his own sorry self. But now his thoughts turn to where they usually go.

What if Carlos is embarrassing himself?

What if Cecil thinks Carlos is really weird and messed up and repulsive, having these violent urges, wanting to be strung in insane postures, wanting to be fucking raped, but is too polite to say so? Cecil is very proud of his ability to be nonjudgemental, at least about people he doesn't hate. What if he is constantly having to remind himself, "Don't judge Carlos for his deranged, off-putting requests. Everyone is a little weird in their own way, and I would frankly be a hippocrite for criticizing him. My, how proud I am of myself for being so open-minded, especially for a freak like Carlos."

"Carlos likes bondage and rape, but hey, some people have fetishes for shoes and waffles."

"Carlos hasn't even ejaculated, but hey, some citizens have two heads or no body, so I'd be ashamed of myself for judging Carlos as broken."

Or maybe Cecil does throw away his nobility and judge him silently, harshly, and constantly, a steady stream of rejection and disgust flowing through his brain: "Ugh, why does this freak want me to hold him down? Here, I'm growling like an animal, that probably satisfies his brainless instincts. You like playing with an imaginary animal like a child? Ick, now I have to tie him up, he looks so stupid. Why do I keep this guy around, I don't even like him now that I've seen this side of him. I should dump him soon."

Carlos' eyes are open and the cotton of his pillow is brushing his lashes. In the dark and the blurriness, he cannot see the stitches, but he can imagine they are there.

How can he repair this? Is it too late for damage control?

If only he had that time machine. He could go back in time, to the last time they had sex, and be normal. And then he could go back to their first time, and do it again and again until he got it right.

But that was impossible, not worth contemplating. What would be more theoretically feasible was a time machine with a fixed point at the moment it turned on.

All he had to do to time travel was create a standing quantum wave of himself between the moment the machine was turned on and the moment it was turned off. Since the wave itself did not actually take time to travel any distance, but instead reached all points in the universe at the exact same moment, it could stretch for any length of time. Therefore he could turn the machine on for one minute, or for thirty years, and the wave inside would be the same length, and could be collapsed at any point to make an exit.

Then maybe he could turn it on and stop making this same mistake over and over! Fuck!

***

By the time Carlos and Cecil had intimate time to themselves again, there was no way he could bear asking for more weird sex. He had finally come up with a work-around he could stomach.

He lit some candles and scattered some rose petals, following advice that he had corroborated across five different dating websites, and put some classy music on in the background.

Cecil knocked, and he pulled him in with a big smile. Cecil noticed the romantic atmosphere, and smiled and kissed him.

"Cecil…" Carlos said, and it was a lot easier to quote the dating site directly, "Tonight we're just going to do what YOU want."

"What… I want?"

"Yes."

Cecil let out a short chuckle. Carlos pulled away from him; Cecil turned his face away and flushed.

Carlos was utterly lost. In the silence that followed, Cecil started to fidget.

"What's wrong?" Carlos asked, stroking Cecil's hair out of his eyes. Quoting another line he had been assured would be sexy, he said, "We can do anything you want. Tonight's all about you." Carlos' heart fluttered as he said it. He genuinely was excited to please Cecil, and to discover what pleased him. Nervous, too, of course. What if his requests revealed he wanted nothing at all what Carlos wanted?

Cecil flushed harder and stared even more diligently at the floor. Voice hushed and feeble, he mumbled, "I'm shy about it. I'm not good at saying what I want, like you."

**

A break there? A break there. That statement marked an entirely new stage in Carlos' life.

**

"I won't judge you," Carlos said after a great length of silence, feeling disembodied and distant. Like writing and mailing Cecil a letter instead of speaking four inches away from his face.

"You'll think I'm weird."

"I already think you're weird. In a good way, I mean. In the way that makes me love you and this town so much. I mean. Cecil, it'll be fine. Just tell me."

"I want--" and Cecil flushed and fidgeted again, and was it Carlos' imagination or was he more purple than red? "Just--" He let go of Carlos fully now, and crossed his arms across his chest. Again he said, "I just don't have your confidence."

"Hey…" Carlos wasn't quite up to the task of explaining to Cecil that things were actually the opposite, it was Carlos who was shy and ashamed and terrified of telling Cecil his secret sexual desires, and it was Cecil who always did and declared everything with such ease. But the empathy-- hey, this was that empathy people kept telling him about-- the empathy drove him to say, "It's okay, I promise, nothing you say could possibly embarrass you."

"Well, can I…" Cecil mumbled something too quietly for Carlos to hear.

"What was that?" Carlos whispered, leaning close.

"Can I come in your hair."

"Sure." The request was so odd and unexpected that Carlos didn't even have time to work emotions into his response; he just stamped the letter and tossed it in the mailbox. Fortunately, the response seemed to put Cecil at ease; he let out a huge sigh. Carlos followed up with the reassurance, "See, that wasn't weird at all." Even though now that he started to think about it, yes, it was pretty damn weird, what was Cecil going to do, rub himself off against his skull? But considering all the praises he trumpeted about Carlos' hair, it really wasn't that surprising.

It really wasn't that surprising that Carlos' hair was a sexual object.

"Um…" Cecil said, hesitating. "How would you like me to…"

"However you want."

"Can you… um… take off your shirt, but then have just your lab coat on, unbuttoned…"

"Sure," Carlos said. He let Cecil help him get undressed. Cecil slid the lab coat back over this shoulders and stepped back and looked him up and down, flushing.

Carlos looked sexy to him, right? He must. There must be something sexy about the way he looked with his chest bare and lab coat gracing his body.

Cecil stroked his chest and stomach for a moment, transfixed. Then he plunged his hand into his hair. He leaned up close, buried his face in it, and sniffed deeply.

"Can you… is… is this okay? So far?" Cecil asked.

"Of course it is. This is entirely about you. After all the times you did what I wanted, it's your turn. So go for it."

"Can you… kneel?"

Carlos dropped to his knees, guessing that Cecil wanted his head level with his crotch. "Like this?"

"Yesss."

Cecil unzipped his pants and pulled himself out. He was hard. He moved to step forward, then hesitated.

Carlos realized Cecil's particular concern as he hovered around him; the angle he seemed to want to come in at was the exact same angle that he had surely noticed, several times, made Carlos flinch. Carlos did not like things looming over him from above, especially when they threatened to touch his head. He reassured Cecil that it was okay, he was expecting it, and then, grasped Cecil's cock and pulled it against his hair.

Cecil moaned and began humping his head, taking in big fistfuls of hair. It was… okay. It really didn't do anything for Carlos. But then, it was doing everything for Carlos, because he was getting to be intimate without embarrassing himself.

Cecil rubbed and heaved on Carlos, and gasped for Carlos to touch him, and Carlos complied. He grabbed and kneaded Cecil to match the way his head was being handled. Cecil quickened and cried and, finally, came. Carlos felt the wet goo soak into his scalp.

Cecil melted to the floor and kissed him. After some time, Carlos offered, "What next?"

Cecil smiled dopily up at him, and flushed. "Well…" he said softly. "Can I… wash your hair?"

"That makes a lot of sense."

Cecil chuckled. "I thought so."

 ***

 Cecil got up to him, very close.

 It was close in a small shower like that. Carlos forced himself to relax. Cecil's shyness had been a guilty pleasure for him, a proof that Cecil had insecurities as well, but ever since climaxing in Carlos' hair, Cecil's confidence had grown.

 Cecil took what he wanted now. He dug his fingers deep into Carlos' hair. He bit his lip and moaned as he lathered shampoo in, sinking his fingers deep.

 Carlos was happy to comply. Little room for embarrassment, here, with Cecil taking the lead.

 Cecil shampooed his hair thoroughly, so much so that Carlos questioned whether he had ever really cleaned his own hair _enough_. Was this how normal people washed their hair? No, he decided as Cecil mouthed his wet locks, this was Cecil overdoing it with his fetish.

 Cecil kissed his hair and ear, and whispered, "Go down on me."

 Okay. That should be easy, right? Right? Oh god, he had no idea how to give a blow job.

 As Carlos dropped to his knees, Cecil said, "Tell me if I'm too rough. This is your first time."

 "I will," Carlos said.

 His first time, right. So Cecil didn't have any expectations, right? The fingers continued to clean each individual strand of hair on his scalp, and Carlos gave Cecil a preliminary lick.

 "OooOOoohh…" Cecil moaned. Okay, that was encouraging.

 Carlos did not like having large objects in his mouth. He always took small bites of food. But when people said things like, "Don't do anything you don't want to in bed," they meant things that were emotionally uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable with large objects in his mouth didn't count. 

 He started by sucking just the tip in, getting used to it. Cecil moaned again and thrust very shallowly. He sucked a little, and explored the tip with his tongue. Salty taste in the slit, not bad, as long as he didn't think about what it was.

 This was already big in his mouth. But he wanted sex to go smoothly. He had no emotional problem with it, he just didn't like big objects in his mouth. Unless… they were a gag. There. Carlos found the momentum to take Cecil fully inside.

 Cecil moaned loudly again, and clutched his hair. His hips bucked shallowly. Every time he neared the back of Carlos' throat, he backed off. Carlos guessed he was trying not to go too far in and make him gag. Very considerate of him, really.

 Not much room to maneuver here. Carlos rubbed his tongue on the underside of the shaft, tried different patterns of sucking. Cecil seemed to like it all. Cecil set up his own rhythm of moving in and out of Carlos' mouth. He told Carlos to touch his balls. At one point, he directed Carlos to suck hard.

Cecil told him he was close. Carlos wondered what he was supposed to do with that information. Cecil finally gasped, "I'm coming," and came inside Carlos' mouth.

 It tasted _disgusting._

 Carlos immediately gagged and pulled back, choking. Just as fast, Cecil was on his knees, shaking Carlos' shoulders gently, apologizing, asking him if he was okay.

Carlos nodded, eyes watering. 

They took a short break so Carlos could rinse with mouthwash. Cecil cursed every item he had eaten in the past week for making his cum taste bad. Carlos had to admit he was curious about whether certain foods could make cum taste GOOD.

Then Cecil had apologized enough and Carlos had reassured him enough and they got back in the shower so Cecil could wash off his face and condition his hair.

Cecil murmured more praises and kissed Carlos's cheek and jawline while waiting for the conditioner to set. They made out in the hot water, the wetness changing the geography of their kisses.

Cecil toweled his hair with enthusiasm. It was like having his head massaged and run through a car wash at once. By this time, all the close contact was starting to make Carlos feel flinchy, but then Cecil kissed his neck and he felt much more compliant.

"What do you want to do?" Cecil breathed, teeth grazing his jugular.

"Whatever you want," Carlos replied.

"No. It's your turn," insisted Cecil.

He kissed Carlos' neck again, and all Carlos could think was, "I want you to tie my wrists tightly," but he had vowed to not ask for something weird like that again.

So again he insisted, "I really want tonight to be just about pleasing you. Just tell me what you want."

And Cecil said, "Let's hold each other a while."

They did, in Cecil's bed. Cecil curled up against him, and Carlos had to make himself hold still, allow the close touch.

"I love you," said Cecil. He said it more than once, and in more than one different way. "I love you the way black loves the Void," he would say. Or, "I could love your for half of eternity, considering the other half is reserved for fearing the unknown."

And they held each other, long into the night, Cecil whispering his sincere devotions, while Carlos felt like he would be lying to say the same.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with this chapter, trying to hobble the good bits together with good-enough bits. Constructive criticism is HIGHLY REQUESTED! I got to the point where I just couldn't step back and look at it anymore. Please tell me how I can fix this up.


	5. In which Carlos has a fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See if you can find the xkcd reference in this chapter.

 

 

Because Carlos just didn't LOVE him.

It was clear, however, that Cecil loved HIM. Cecil never shut up about how much he loved him. It was plain in his actions: the way he always thought to text and check in on him, the way he brought little gifts and snacks to Carlos in his lab, the way he just gazed at Carlos like his mere presence was all it took to make him infinitely happy.

It made him feel incredibly guilty, like he was taking and not reciprocating.

And he knew he was supposed to say it back. But he didn't like to lie. And that was an awfully big lie, wasn't it? "I love you." Even saying it to Cecil in his head made his stomach clench.

He had never loved anyone, not even his own parents. Sometimes they would come home late, and he would think, "Maybe they died. Wouldn't that be interesting?" with no sadness at the idea of loss.

What if he couldn't love? It seemed like a likely scenario, considering his autism. Love was a connection between two people, after all, and connecting to people was exactly where he was impaired.

So if Cecil loved him unconditionally, and it was impossible for Carlos to love no matter how hard he tried, how unfair would that be to Cecil?

***

He doesn't like that the "ribbon color" for Autistic Spectrum Disorder is a puzzle.

Never mind that "puzzle" isn't even a color. That one gets a Get Out Of Jail Free card.

For one thing, pretty much any disease or disorder is a puzzle. Why does this cancer keep coming back? Why do people with bipolar disorder act that way? How does Alzheimer's destroy the mind?

And then, worse, the puzzle DOES imply that autism is a mystery that is truly incomprehensible to people, more so than the others. The cancer and the bipolar disorder and the Alzheimer's we can understand, but autism? No way, that's far too alien. We have no idea how to solve that.

Ask the doctor. Ask the parent. Ask the Aspie. What's going on? I don't know, it's a puzzle!

Also, it reminds him of children, with its bright colors and reference to games. When he had first been diagnosed, he had tried to look up information online, and all he got was pages and pages of information targeted at parents of autistic children. It made him feel out of place to have it as an adult. Made having autism as an adult childish.

And finally, there is the concept of the ribbon itself. Didn't it start as the red ribbon for AIDS? It was meant to be a symbol of strength, support, and healing. So if someone were to give him a ribbon or wear one for him, wouldn't that mean they thought he was sick?

***

IS he sick?

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a disorder. But it's also simply the way Carlos is. A part of the structure of his existence. Don't all the great compassionate thinkers say that every person should be true to himself, for he is perfect at his core?

But at his core, he is disordered?

Autism is a part of who he is. Carlos knows that. If a genie offered to whisk it away, he would probably decline. To erase his autism would be to erase what makes him himself. It would change the very way he thinks, and thus, the identity of his mind.

So… is it in his nature to be sick?

What does "sick" even mean? That his health is below average? Certainly, there are therapies for autism, meant to help the individual better socialize, better manage emotions, better live. Cures for a disease.

So is Carlos failing himself if he doesn't try to get "better?"

He's never undergone therapy or learned any techniques for coping or socialization. He's gotten along well enough. Accepted the crippling anxieties and social aversions as a part of who he is. Isn't it a sort of wellness, to love yourself as you are?

Does he love himself? Is he content to be this way? Does he feel sick, or does he feel just fine?

Carlos certainly has moments where he doesn't want to be himself at all.

But doesn't everybody? Isn't everybody a collection of strengths and weaknesses?

But CARLOS' weaknesses are a DISORDER.

Not normal weaknesses like other people have.

Carlos' weaknesses make him sick.

But in a way, isn't that also a good thing? Again, sickness has treatment. Not a cure-- autism never goes away-- but it can be managed. Symptoms alleviated, the way cold medicine abolishes coughing. There do exist methods for him to improve. Maybe having a disorder is a good thing, then, since normal people have to accept their weaknesses with no excuses and no cure.

With nobody saying, "It's okay you made that mistake, you couldn't help it. You're sick."

Is he helpless?

Is even extensive therapy sufficient to turn him into someone he can be truly happy with?

Is it sufficient to make him love Cecil?

***

They had sex some more times, and no matter how ashamed Carlos was before and after, in the heat of the moment, he asked for it. When Cecil was kissing his neck, all he could do was plead for bondage and rape.

Cecil always complied like it wasn't weird at all.

And maybe… maybe it WASN'T so weird.

People liked bondage. Sex shops carried cuffs and ball gags. Even rape fantasies were a thing. Sure, the excessively violent fantasies in his head were abnormal, but maybe… just maybe, asking Cecil to tie him up in bed was okay.

***

Carlos came to find himself trusting Cecil, in a way. In a way that he wasn't trusting Cecil so much as Cecil made it okay to trust himself.

***

Shame.

Carlos' every instinct told him that if he was at fault for any reason, he should hang his head and accept the shame. That by being even a little bit wrong, he had no right to stand up for himself in any way. No right to say, "Well, I am wrong about this, but you still shouldn't treat me that way." He had to wait for the other person to allow him to stand tall again. Had to wait for them to decide he'd been punished enough.

But intellectually, he knew this was not the appropriate thing to do. Intellectually, he knew that sometimes, he could do something wrong, but the other person's response could be wrong as well, and he DID have the right to stand up for himself and call that out.

Cecil said over the radio that he chewed too loudly.

And he had been TOLD that, as a child. "You chew too loudly. You're making everyone around you sick!" He KNEW better than to do that. But here he was on dates, chewing like a horse. Unacceptable. Shameful. Wrong.

But Cecil had no right to broadcast that all over the radio.

So Carlos should stand up for himself. He should, despite being in the wrong, still assert that he deserves a certain level of respect. He knew being at fault did not strip him of that, even though it felt that way.

In fact, why not make this a real confrontation? Carlos got in his car, heart thudding, and drove to the station.

Cecil's show ended a few minutes before he arrived. He waited in the parking lot for a few minutes, but Cecil didn't come out. There were new cars here. Like, new as in different, but also new as in shiny, expensive, and much nicer than the cars driven by most Night Valeans.

The cars only occupied him for a few minutes before he got bored, and went in.

Cecil's shouting was audible the moment he stepped in the door.

Even Carlos could tell this was angry shouting. Furious shouting. It was in Cecil's full, deep, powerful radio voice, and it made Carlos' core shake like he was standing next to a loud bass speaker.

Four men in yellow and black suits walked by him, grinning so widely that even Carlos noticed their expression. Cecil followed them, howling, "Night Vale has gods that saw the rise and fall of ten civilizations before your god was even a dim light! I belong to these dark masters and I will NEVER 'prepare' my town for the likes of YOU! Get out! GET OUT!!"

The men were already walking towards the door anyway, and they continued out. Carlos thought that sort of tirade should make the men at least stop smiling, but the grins never faltered on their faces.

Cecil stared after them, teeth showing, chest heaving. He finally acknowledged, "Carlos."

"Hey, uh, Cecil. What was that about."

"Absolutely NOTHING."

"Okay." Carlos tried to gather the thoughts he'd had in his head when he drove here. "Look, I know I chew loudly, and I apologize for that. I'll try not to chew so loudly. But I don't think it's right for you to talk about me like that on the radio. That's public humiliation. It's not-- Cecil, are you listening to me?"

Cecil had abruptly walked away from him. Carlos followed him into his studio, where he began picking up papers that had been strewn about the floor, ripping each page into shreds and throwing it in the trash.

"Listen, this is important," Carlos said, a little irritated.

"I'm listening," said Cecil, as he crumpled a page into a ball and ripped at it with his teeth.

"I told you before I'm not comfortable with you talking about our personal life on the radio--"

" **DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO SAY ON THE RADIO!** "

***

Carlos' father yelled when he was a child.

It was always unexpected. Carlos would be happily bouncing along, saying and doing things with no worries, and SUDDENLY. HE'D BE YELLING.

Carlos had done something that made his father furious.

And he never had any idea he was doing something wrong. He was just being himself. And at any moment, just being himself could set his father off. At any moment, just being himself could be wrong.

Maybe this was why he always worried so much that he was being inappropriate. The reason he always was afraid in social situations. Because it had been ingrained into him many times when he was young that when he was just being himself, he would get into gut-wrenching trouble.

But knowing and feeling were two different things. Carlos dearly wished emotional problems could be solved with logic: "I feel afraid to interact because my father had a short temper. His temper was not an accurate reflection of my actual ability to be appropriate. Therefore, my feelings of being incapable are invalid. I should just be myself without fear."

But emotional problems could not be solved with logic. And even though he was an adult, Carlos could not be yelled at without falling apart.

***

Cecil's voice was a punch in the stomach. Carlos immediately started to cry.

He quickly turned and walked away, so Cecil wouldn't see. He knew it wasn't right for Cecil to yell at him, not even after he'd screwed up by chewing loudly. He knew he should stand his ground and say something like, "Don't yell at me." He knew he should be unaffected. But Cecil had yelled at him, and all he could do was cry.

***

He paced in his lab, calming down. Was it over with Cecil now? He had yelled at him. Could he ever feel safe around him again?

A time machine could not fix this. How could a time machine possibly fix this? What did it matter. Carlos was far too massive for quantum time travel, anyway. That sort of thing would work on a particle of light, maybe even something as large as an electron. But the quantum effects for anything as massive as a person would be 32 orders of magnitude too small.

Unless… Carlos' sniffles vanished as a great scientific thought crossed his mind. Mass came from the interaction of the Higgs boson with subatomic particles. If he could find a way to cancel that interaction out, perhaps convert it to other particles and packets of energy, matter would cease to have mass. An object the size of a person wouldn't even be harmed by this-- gravity did not have a significant effect at this scale, and all the other forces that held molecules together would be intact. In fact, one of the great mysteries of the Standard Model had been WHY mass existed, since everything else seemed to work just fine without it!

The first step would be to get the Higgs boson to cancel out on the scale of an electron. Carlos had plenty of scientific equipment for that.

With no thought, absolutely no other thought in his mind, Carlos threw himself into his work.

***

An apology was all it took, of course.

An apology was all it ever took when Carlos felt wronged. All resentment instantly vanished at those sincere words of reparation and regret. It never seemed like it would be that simple, but it always was.

After four days of ignoring Cecil's calls and texts, Carlos received a visit from Cecil in his lab.

Cecil brought him Easter candy and a jar of hammers. And he apologized, eloquently and profusely, in his beautiful radio voice.

And it was that simple.

Carlos melted, and everything was okay again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been pointed out to me that some of you might be afraid to comment. Please, comment! Especially if you're on the spectrum. I want to hear from you.


	6. In Which Carlos Confesses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: We are about to get into the portion of the story where some of Carlos' rape fantasies are described in detail. From here on out, I will warn before a section that contains graphic depictions of violence or noncon. These warnings will include a Violent Rape Rating from 0-10 so you have a sense of how bad it's going to be. Anything 3 and below will be along the lines of a good BDSM scene and should be safe for anyone who's stuck with this so far. High ratings should only be read by people who are comfortable with extreme violence. I have a couple violent scenes that tie in to the plot, and the relevant points will be summarized later for those who chose to skip the violent scenes.

[A/N: This first section contains a very violent rape fantasy. Skip it if you're not comfortable with violence or noncon. Violent Rape Rating: 9/10.]

Carlos is a sexual object.

And he is going to masturbate.

Not only that, he is going to embrace his fantasies. He is going to think about Cecil being violently hurt.

It's a practical exercise. Really it is. If he can make himself orgasm, maybe he can bring that epiphany with him and orgasm when he next has sex with Cecil.

It's also a terrifying step. He already feels like he's violating people by bringing them into his fantasies, and here he's going to be torturing Cecil on top of that.

But he is not afraid to wreck things.

Carlos prepares himself for it. He eats a good, healthy meal so he won't feel at all weak or nauseous. He gets out the towels and Kleenex and lube. He makes sure the curtains on his windows are closed. He adjusts the temperature so he won't be cold without his clothes.

Then he takes off his clothes and sits on the edge of his bed.

Takes himself into his hand, closes his eyes, and pictures Cecil.

Cecil is crouched on his hands and knees, frightened inside his cage. His hands are bound together. He is naked, shaking, and already bruised.

People stand around the cage, jeering at him. The bars are wide enough to reach through, and the people do. They punch his sides and grab his hair. They claw him, leaving long red marks.

Carlos bites his lip and strokes himself. Half-hard. The crowd gets more violent. They shove objects inside, hitting him, cutting him. They hold his legs and shove sticks up his anus. He tries to get away, but hands everywhere pull him and pin him. Ropes come out. His arms and legs are lashed to the bars of the cage, stretching him and making him immobile. The assault continues.

Cecil cries out. Tears flow down his face and drip on the cage floor. He can't even cower and draw away now. Knives tickle and tease him, then open deep gashes. His hands, sticking through the bars, get gnawed. The objects shoved in his ass get longer, thicker, and rougher.

Then they open the cage.

Cecil's bonds are cut and he's dragged, writhing, onto the dirt, blood-covered branch still wedged between his ass cheeks. His wrists are tied together again, but his legs, those are spread wide apart. He cries and arches his back as his dick is roughly grabbed.

Carlos is so fucking hard right now.

People pin his wrists above his head and open his legs wide. The branch moves in and out and the hand kneads his genitals viciously. Despite the pain, Cecil gets hard, humiliatingly so, and he weeps.

There is room for a whip now. For a metal pipe to strike him on the head, hard enough to make him loll. His dick is released, and where the hand once was, a hot iron is pressed.

Carlos is breathing heavily now. He adds more lube and tastes blood on his lip.

Cecil screams and thrashes. The branch is yanked out of him, and a red-hot iron is inserted instead. Pinned like he is, Cecil can't even bring his legs together; he is just open and vulnerable. The iron thrusts him like a lover, then pushes hard and deep, trying to meet the iron pressing into his crotch.

Cecil bucks and writhes to try to throw some part, any part, of his torment off. Then he is struck again on the head and goes momentarily limp. Dazed, wet eyes staring, chest panting shallowly, he can only mewl at the feeling of hands rubbing his body down with gasoline.

The iron on his crotch is removed, and hands rub the gasoline thoroughly on his dick. The iron in his ass, though cooled, resumes its thrusts. Cecil chokes and whimpers in fright.

Carlos feels it in his abdomen. His heart is racing. He doubles over, pumping himself hard.

Abruptly, Cecil is left untouched. He sprawls on the ground, bound hands over his eyes, legs closing around the rod. He whimpers and sobs. More gasoline is poured on him, and he lets out another frightened cry.

So close now. Carlos can feel it approaching, feel his body coiling for a jump.

Someone lights a match.

Cecil goes up in flames. He screams and thrashes. Someone in the crowd is wearing asbestos; he pins Cecil's abdomen and fucks him with something thick, rough, and on fire.

So close… so close… Where does he go from here? Carlos' orgasm gets confused. The direction to head in becomes unclear.

More people are fireproof. They pin Cecil so he can't even thrash. The object in his ass is thrust with superhuman strength, skewering him. It pushes all the way through his body and into his throat. Its end comes out his mouth. Eyes wide, Cecil is still conscious. He struggles to breathe, but cannot.

Carlos doesn't know what to do with this feeling. It starts to shunt off.

Cecil is crying, and jerking, and burning, and fuck, Carlos doesn't know how to orgasm. He lets himself go with a frustrated huff.

The fire and stick vanish from Cecil. He collapses on the ground, moaning softly. He weakly brings a hand up to wipe tears from his eyes.

***

So... back to science…

Science could be at once inspiring and disappointing. Carlos remembered being young, and reading with excitement about the swarms of nanobots that would be cleaning homes in just a few years. About the mission to Jupiter that would launch in just a decade. About the 3D printers that will be on everyone's desktop in 5 years. About the bioengineered soil bacteria that would raise the humidity in Israel by 50% in six months.

And then, the deadlines came and passed. No more word about the nanobots. The Jupiter mission, cancelled due to funding. The 3D printers, a rarity. The bioengineered bacteria, nonviable.

All those hopeful projects, stalled. Promises broken. Dreams deferred.

It took some of the joy out of reading science news today. Truly worldwide internet delivered by high-altitude balloons? Contact lenses that could read blood glucose? LiFi internet at thousands of times the current speed? Self-driving cars?

If he were younger, he would be excited, so very excited for the future. But now, he is just jaded. He reads about a new project with the dreary feeling that it is doomed.

Quantum computers. Quantum teleportation. Faster-than-light neutrinos. All so much more promising in theory than in practice.

Time travel, of course, not even a headline of a doomed project.

Every experiment asks a question. And sometimes the answer is "No." More often than not, it seems, the answer is "No."

But there is always nobility in trying. And for every thousand failures, a success breaks through. Look at the internet. SpaceX. Plastic. Cheap complex devices.

Carlos is a scientist. And, despite what would be suggested by logic, by rationality, by objectivity, a scientist is always hopeful.

It might even be the first thing a scientist is.

***

Pain didn't work for him.

Carlos asked for it, a few times, in the heat of the moment. "Hit me." Then Cecil would slap him and he would yelp, "That's too hard!" and tears would threaten to breach the corners of his eyes. Cecil did this great thing where he would rub the area and ask in his ear if he was okay, and not falter when Carlos wanted to continue with sex. Carlos was very grateful for that. It would kill him if Cecil stopped everything and fell apart with concern.

Likewise, when he asked Cecil to bite him. The first time he did it, in the middle of a heated and rough fucking, Cecil closed his jaws hard around his shoulder. And when Carlos gasped, "Too hard!", he did not fall over himself apologizing. He muttered, "Sorry," once, licked the spot, and then nipped him very lightly. And they continued on like nothing had gone wrong.

Carlos asked for pain and when he couldn't handle it, it felt like things had gone wrong. He was doing it wrong. His was getting his fantasies wrong.

A little pain where he was being restrained or choked was okay. A little discomfort, for a little bit of time. Some ache and burn when he was being fucked hard. But beyond that, he was a wuss.

He had to remind himself that manliness is not directly proportional to pain tolerance. But still… he felt like a wuss.

***

He started sleeping on the couch.

He finally got tired of lying in bed awake all night. Literally. He tried headphones, and even generated 16 hours of white noise to listen to, but the motion of Cecil shifting woke him up.

He tried to come up with acceptable excuses for sleeping on the couch. "Your snoring and moving keeps me awake" seemed to be good enough. It was strange to be able to get through a social situation by telling the truth.

Cecil tried to give his bed to him when he found out what Carlos was doing and why, but Carlos wouldn't let him be inconvenienced. Cecil started going home instead of sleeping over whenever he was at Carlos' house. Sometimes Carlos just went straight home, too.

Couples were supposed to sleep together. Maybe if he truly loved Cecil, Carlos would be able to sleep next to him. Carlos was just so broken.

***

Cecil had been bugging him to go for a picnic at Radon Canyon for days.

And Carlos wanted to. Really, he wanted to. It's just that he had these samples to analyze and these measurements to take and these scientific instruments to operate.

He finally, finally, after about five days of pestering, forced himself to remember that boyfriends spend time with each other. His current experiment needed time to spawn anyway.

And so, he found himself far out in the sand wastes, on the edge of Radon Canyon, only a few aged trees standing sentry at the edge of a steep drop.

“We're in the middle of nowhere,” Cecil remarked. He looked slowly around, prompting Carlos to turn with him. “Nobody for miles. No help. Not even emergency services.”

Cecil growled and pushed Carlos hard against a tree.

From somewhere on his person, Cecil pulled out rope, pinned Carlos' wrists against the tree with it balled up in his hand, pressed his body into the tree with all his weight, and snarled into his mouth.

And this. Was not. Okay.

Carlos made a frightened noise and jerked his head out of the kiss. He didn't know why. Clearly Cecil was trying to pander to his violent fantasies and surprise him with just the sort of scene he wanted. But it felt like an unwelcome assault and he didn't know why.

Maybe because he hadn't asked for it? For all his rape fantasies, he really did need to be controlling the situation and giving his clear consent?

Cecil felt him stiffen and pull away in a non-sexual way, and immediately pulled back. “I'm sorry,” fell from his lips. He looked stricken.

“No, no, it's okay,” Carlos reassured quickly, heart pounding and knees weak. “I mean, it's... I...”

And then he fell to his knees, back sliding down the rough bark, and he confessed everything.

“I. I want it, I do. I don't know why that set me off. That never happened before. I want to be raped. I want... I want violence. I want you to hurt me more than it's physically possible to be hurt, and I want to be bound so tight I can't move, want to be gagged so I can't speak or beg, and I want it to be completely non-consensual. I want to be raped by you, by a dozen men at once, by beasts that tear me apart with their rough genitals. I want to be cut open. I want to be drowned. I want to be killed. I want to be dismembered and burned and torn apart while things fuck me, plow into me, bring me helplessly off. I want to be beaten and tortured and bound for days on end until I can't stand it and every waking moment is hell. I want to be a starved and abused slave, lashed to a rack as punishment to be used by strangers, every hole, and cut and hurt too, and eaten and stabbed and disemboweled by the people who fuck my helpless body. I want to have my limbs amputated, be tied to a board and fed through a tube in my throat while lines of strangers pay to fuck me. I want to orgasm while I die a messy death.”

He stopped, panting, and found he had huddled against the tree, knees drawn up next to his ears, hands clutching his hair and eyes wild. “I want... I want... to be hurt and killed and raped and forced to come, and I don't think I can do it any other way.”

There was no right response to this. Carlos' world was about to shatter. But Cecil had always come up with that magical unimaginable response before that made everything all right.

Carlos looked desperately up. Cecil stood there, mouth hanging, hand reaching uncertainly to help him and then abandoned frozen in the air.

This was not the right response.

He was wrecked anyway. He was wrecked. This was wrecked. And now that he had paid this high price, he should go ahead and get everything out.

“And I want to hurt YOU,” he said. He stared at Cecil's sexy body and he growled, “I want to tie you up and hurt you until you discover I'm an evil twisted thing and you panic and try desperately to struggle and escape but it's too late, I've tied you so you can't move an inch and I shove a gag in your mouth and I torture you for days and rape you and starve you and shove rough objects inside you and force you to suck me off while your eyes leak tears and then kill you while I orgasm down your helpless throat.” Carlos looked wildly at him and panted like an animal. “I want to rape you. I want to rape you. I want to rape you and torture you and kill you and I want it to be entirely without your consent. I want you screaming and crying and choking on cum. I want to watch you burn alive. I want to watch you get ripped apart by giant squid that shove their tentacles inside you while you drown. I want to watch you writhe in an electrified cage, screaming and twitching and jerking and it is so god damned hot.”

Cecil dropped to his knees. His eyes were wide. “Carlos...” he started. “Carlos, hey.” He reached for him.

“DON'T TOUCH ME,” Carlos yelled.

Cecil jerked his hand back. “Okay,” came out on a voiceless breath.

“I, I don't know why,” Carlos said, clutching his head again and burying his face between his knees. Dark and warm and claustrophobic, here. It helped. “I never had anything bad happen to me. But I can't, I just can't get these thoughts out of my head. I used to be good at suppressing them, just focusing on science all the time. But now that I'm sexually active. I. I let my fantasies loose. They've flourished, fast, like the Cambrian Explosion. And they are so, so. So... so awful, Cecil. Terrible, violent, just... I, I don't know. I want to die and kill and all this pain and rape and torment, and I know it's wrong, but I just. I just can't stop it. I don't know why. I don't know I don't know I don't know…"

Could he undo this. He could never undo this. He could never build a time machine, not one that would work on something with as much mass as him at a temperature that would not kill him. Even then, it would have to be at two fixed points, and this point would exist before he turned the machine on, and what would be the fucking point of a time machine if it could not erase this moment.

He calculated again how many orders of magnitude too massive he was, even if he lost weight. Even getting an electron to time travel was pushing it. A human? Impossible. Impossible by… 32 orders of magnitude. The math helped calm him. Eventually he came around. His breathing returned to normal and he uncurled from his fetal position.

"Okay. So."

Cecil sat on the ground and drew meaningless pictures in the sand, not looking at him.

"I say I like your hair. But. I'm… I'm hiding more." He got VERY focused on his drawing, which seemed to be a square with spokes sticking out of it. "I don't just like your hair, to like, touch it and smell it. I. Want it on my body. Like, not the way one man looks at another man and goes, 'Ooo! He has nice hair, I wish my hair looked like that.' Like, I want your hair to infiltrate me. All over my body. I want it to set down roots, like trees. I want it to crawl through my cells and veins like burrowing snakes. I want to just… be a rustling, hobbling creature filled with your hair." He drew some anxious parallel lines and whispered, "And I want your grey streaks in exactly the right places."

He crosshatched every line he had drawn so far. "And I, you know. I get off to this. It's what I think about when I think about… you… sex… when I…" Cecil made his cross hatches deeper. "… When I masturbate. That's what I masturbate to. Your hair just squirming through all my cells and pores."

He doodled some more. His head did not move in the slightest to meet Carlos' gaze. "And I, um. I chew on hair. I'll… if I'm really feeling horny, I'll… I'll cut off a bit of my hair, and chew on it, and swallow it, and rub it on my skin, and like, hold it on my tongue and lick myself, and rub it on… you know, have it in my hand and rub myself when I jerk off." Cecil's fingernail was starting to get packed with dirt and that was starting to freak Carlos out a little. "I, um. From swallowing the hair. I, uh. You know, it comes out the other end, and I can feel it, and sometimes I pull on it, really slowly, I pull it out, and it's the best feeling in the world."

Carlos noticed Cecil was chewing his lip. It was getting red and bruised. "And you know. The whole time. I'm thinking this is your hair."

Then he was silent. They both were silent, for quite a while.

"Um. So. We're even now. Right." Cecil hunched and became even more intently focused on a lopsided circle he was digging deeper and deeper with his finger. "I mean. I didn't think I'd ever tell anyone that. But since you, uh. You're just. You're braver than me, and I thought, we're sharing, so. Oh, masters, but mine is so much weirder. I… I freaked you out. I'm… I'm sorry. It's stupid. I'm stupid. I'm stupid, and, and gross, and I shouldn't think of your hair that way and I'm so stupid and I'm sorry--"

"Cecil I… Hey." Carlos put his hand on Cecil's, stilling it. "Um. First off, you don't have to feel weird about your fantasies. Everyone has weird fantasies, right? It's.. it's okay. But. Uh."

Carlos looked at the circle Cecil had been carving into the sand. He smoothed out the lopsided edge, and thickened the entire line to even out the whole thing. "I don't think you get my point. There's something WRONG with having fantasies that are so violent." The newer edges of the circle weren't so deep. He worked on deepening them. "Your fantasies are okay. But mine are… they show there's something wrong with me."

"Oh," Cecil said. He drew a long, snaking neck coming off the circle that ended in a roaring head. "What's wrong with you?"

Carlos added four short, deep feet. "I don't know."

"But, then," Cecil drew a tail, but it just ended in a long, meandering line. "What's wrong?"

"I have violent fantasies."

"Yeah?"

"That's… that's what's wrong."

"I don't think that's illegal."

"Um."

"Just if you have fantasies specifically about certain things, like mountains. Like if you were being tortured on a mountain, that would be bad. Or if you killed someone while insisting the moon is a natural phenomenon. Or if you fantasized about being raped without the Sheriff's Secret Police watching." Cecil flicked a row of spikes down the animal's back. "Is… is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"No. I just. Where I come from, violent fantasies are… well, they're not illegal there either, but…" Carlos looked for something to add to the dragon dinosaur monster thing, but it was pretty much done.

"Do you think less of me?" Cecil asked after silence. "Do you think my fantasies are too weird?"

Carlos sat back from the drawing and sighed. "No, Cecil," he said. "Everything is fine."

***

They sat and watched the lights over Radon Canyon for quite some time. Carlos kept wavering between wanting to run back home for instruments and wanting to just have a moment with Cecil. But going home would take such a long time and he was frankly exhausted from what had just happened. Emotionally and physically drained.

So, was this it? He had told Cecil all the things he had feared letting him know. He had violent fantasies. He imagined Cecil being tortured and raped. And Cecil was just… fine with it. So, were all his anxieties just over now?

"You know," Cecil said, "I can make it happen."

And no, this was not the end.

"Make what happen?"

Cecil didn't take his eyes off the lights. "Your fantasies."

"Uhm. I don't think… they're, uh, physically possible… I mean… Cecil… I imagine myself being torn apart. Literally. You as well. We're raped and killed."

"Yes. I can do that."

"What?"

“With my Voice," Cecil said. "It's like hypnosis. But I can take absolute control. Like I did with that man I killed. I hijacked his actions, made him go where I told him to go, made him say what I told him to say, and even created a vision of a dark planet lit by no sun. I narrated him to death. All at the orders of the Town Council, of course. I would never be inclined to override someone's will on my own. Well. Unless they ticked me off.”

“Did you do that with, um. Telly the barber?”

Cecil brightened. “Why yes, I did! In fact, he's still in the world I constructed for him. I never let him go.”

"Cecil, I paid him to cut my hair."

"And he imagines the cacti in the sand wastes are paying him! See. A perfect world."

“And you can do that... to me.”

Cecil pressed his lips tight. “Yes. I can.” He paused. “But. I love you, and I don't know if I'm capable of taking away your consent so you can be raped and, in your reality, killed.”

"We can… have a safe word or something. Right?"

"Yesss…" Cecil said. "Something like that. And I can monitor you. But it would be difficult to tell where real distress set in. But we can work something out."

"Wait. So. You can do this."

"Do you want me to?"

"I, uh." Carlos wrung his hands. "I… I'll think about it. I mean, don't, like, surprise me with it."

"I won't. We'll discuss it in full ahead of time."

"And I don't… know if I'll be ready for it soon." Carlos was already feeling sick at the idea of sharing an entire fantasy in detail with another person. Confessing that he had them in the first place was hard enough, but to walk Cecil through one of his gory fuckfests in naked detail? He was not ready for that. It was hard to imagine ever being ready.

"I would never push you."

Being pushed might actually help. Take some of the responsibility off of him, remove some of the shame of sharing from him. He'd be forced to divulge a fantasy. Not have to gather up the guts to do it himself.

Carlos sighed. "I know."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to each and every one of you who has stuck with me through 6 long, rambling chapters. Your comments have kept me going. I've already written many more long, rambling chapters, full of sex and introspection. Next chapter even has some action and plot in it. Who's ready for a trip to Desert Bluffs? ;)


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